Review Summary: Ebbe and flow
Being an “internet music nerd” can translate oddly into the real world. Too often I find myself being asked where I found a band and I end up giving the unspecific, unsatisfying answer of: “Oh, you know, online” which, while accurate, leaves a lot to be desired. Yet somehow, it seems more reasonable than explaining “Well, I had been listening to
Sunn O)))’s
Black One and found myself scrolling through the list of blackened doom bands on Metal Archives and happened to pick one at random and it turned out to be a gem”.
Enter
Ebbe.
I’ll start right off the bat by saying this sounds nothing like
Sunn O))) just to reset expectations following that opening paragraph. In fact, it’s pretty generous to throw the drone label their way at all since, aside from the last track, the album falls pretty neatly within the blackened doom sub (sub?) genre. The band explores the full breadth of what that genre has to offer in the album's short sub-30 minute run-time. The songs weaves between groovier, almost stoner metal sounding riffs which give way to driving trems and blast beat, which lead into sections of slow, feedback laden distortion; all with the vocalist’s evil snarl interspersed throughout.
The varying sections are held together by a production style that is likely to make or break the album depending on the listener. The entire album has a certain muffled quality almost reminiscent of the first
Ash Borer demo but pushed even further. It’s an interesting look at how production can totally change the tone of an album as with a more forceful sound, this album may have sounded closer to
Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean. However, the production style gives the entire release a haze that completely changes the feel and pushes it into atmospheric black metal territory and, one could
almost say, drone. While the muffled sound may be hit or miss for some, I’d argue it finds a novel presentation for familiar ingredients and is all the stronger for it. Your mileage may vary on that one.
Releasing one album in 2018 only to disappear since,
Ebbe seemed doomed to be forgotten in the annals of tiny extreme metal bands that could have been. While I am hopeful we will one day get to see more from this band; even if this single release is what we are left with, it is a welcome addition to the world of blackened doom metal.
