Album Rating: 4.0

They all slay. Alloy and Lead and Aether are easy 4.5's and this and Farmakon are easy 4's. Gonna try and jam Stormcrowfleet tomorrow after work.

"Listening to Stormcrowfleet is like dying, slowly.
"

haha pretty much. scf is awesome, but man it really suffocates you, smothering doom

Lead and Aether is awesome, Farmakon is fucking unbelievable which is why I was pretty surprised when I started enjoying this on an equal level.

Most people tell me Stormcrowfleet and Alloy are their bests so if I end up enjoying them as much as I hopefully will these guys are easily gonna end up being one of my favorite bands

'The lack of bass player hurts them a tad bit on a live setting but this is maybe my favorite thing they've done so far (Still haven't listened to Stormcrowfleet and Alloy though)'

I get why people think that the lack of bass is a bad thing, but honestly the organ fills out the sound just as much and imo sets them apart from basically any doom band ever. It's not like the band isn't heavy. Stormcrowfleet and Alloy are very different, but you should listen to both. I'd say Alloy first though.

Album Rating: 4.0

Finally jammed Stormcrowfleet, god damn what an amazing album.

fuck yeah, a top 5 funeral doom album for me

yeah that and Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult are on the verge of 5's and probably will be.

Album Rating: 4.0

I don't even know how to describe it. It's so simple, but so suffocating at the same time.

I think Worships last cd before doomsday is the greatest purest funeral doom, but stormcrowfleet comes close.

Right up there with evokens quietus, and disembowlments classic.

Much better than that thergothon album.

Quietus is one of the best, i almost 5'd it.

someone should review it. that and Black Wreath.

I'd enjoy the material on here much more with a production alá Stormcrowfleet.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to record this live should be sacked.

you mean you'd enjoy it more if the production sounded flat and outdated?

doing this live was a great decision and it sounds really good. the band sound very different now to the Stormcrowfleet years, Ordeal seems very clearly to be the natural progression from Alloy

I think the live setting totally kills the otherwordly atmosphere most of their albums have. When I hear songs from Stormcrowfleet (or even Alloy), I leave this planet.

Here my imagination is always disrupted by images of some guy playing the guitar in front of an audience (actual people!) and a singer graspig for air (an actual human!).
You know what I mean? It destroys the mystery.

no I don't get quite what you mean. in fact, I would say that a guitarist in front of an audience or a singer gasping for air as he does inhuman gutturals, is probably more affecting than the same guitarist and vocalist in a studio with no one else there. it's a very organic performance and I challenge you to find many metal live albums (let alone funeral doom) that sound this good. you're basically criticising a live album for not being a studio album, which is pointless.

Album Rating: 4.0

You really can't even tell that it's a live album, production here is pretty flawless tbh.

"you're basically criticising a live album for not being a studio album, which is pointless."

I'm criticising a band for releasing a live album as a regular full-length.
But yeah, it's not like this is utterly horrible. It just feels unwarranted to me.

'I'm criticising a band for releasing a live album as a regular full-length.'

uhh, what? Plenty of bands release live albums, this one just happens to be a whole set of new material. And 'unwarranted'? How is this in any way 'unwarranted'?

I'll stop picking on your silly comments now, but I'll say that any one who actually likes Skepticism should (understandably) be stoked that the group released new material, and stoked that it sounds as good as it does.

If you don't like it that's fine, but to narrow your criticism to 'well I just think it's unwarranted because it doesn't fit my arbitrary definition of an album' makes it almost impossible to not call you out.

I think I went into this expecting a regular studio album but got served a live album. To me, there's a big difference between the two, comparable to a film and a play.

And this is not just a live album like millions of others, but a very special case of a regular album recorded in a live setting, advertised and canonized as a full-length.

I think it's fair to criticize this unusual (albeit interesting) approach.

i can honestly see alastor's point. still haven't heard this as an album but the songs sounded sweet live