It's always commendable when a member of a band admits to being aware of how their chosen musical style is certainly not for everyone. After all, even on paper the sub-genre of funeral doom is a bit of a nightmare to someone that has never even heard a My Dying Bride song from the early 90s, or indeed experienced the solemn silhouettes of any of Shape of Despair's material. Yet even having said this, co-vocalist and bassist of Californian doomsayers Amarok still sets his sights on "one day creating a song under six minutes". A revelation or a realistic goal? Perhaps it's a bit of both.
Amarok's latest album,
Devoured describes all that is despised about funeral doom metal in one single, twenty-minute track. Don't worry, fans of the sludgier side of funeral doom style will undoubtedly find something to like here, but a newcomer will more than likely get tired of album opener "Sorceress" after a mere few minutes. That's not particularly anyone's fault, but the fact that Amarok don't offer anything refreshing here simply offers an impression of great disappointment, before you've even considered how the rest of the album will unfold. Nevertheless, the slow rumble of hopeless, bedraggled rhythms and despair-inducing vocal delivery certainly makes its stamp within a couple of minutes, but does little else for another eighteen. "Rat Tower" is a little different and opens itself up into newer, more melodic worlds, but the musicianship still attempts to hit the same target, and depending on your liking for funeral doom, misses it by a mile. Yet again however, this is all part of Amarok's spiritual inspirations, transforming deep emotional voids into musical prowess as fluently as possible.
Thankfully, the shorter songs give off the impression that there's going to be a more immediate experience, where there isn't such a gradual build-up, and sure enough "Skeleton" proves to be both the heaviest and bleakest offering of the four songs here. The second half has an instrumental flair unmatched by its predecessors but unfortunately fails to lift spirits (though nobody is expecting such a thing to happen at this point in the album). Which leads the listener to the final song, and ultimately the highlight of the album, the title track. By far the most harmonic piece of
Devoured, the SolstafÃ*r-esque intro lends itself to a thoroughly enjoyable listen before an unsurprisingly crushing rhythm section unfolds. Amarok deliver this with more conviction than you'd expect and especially considering they've already unleashed 50+ minutes of very similar-sounding material by this point. However, at this stage impatient newcomers will have looked elsewhere for more enjoyable music (on their part), something more intriguing and daring, but for those that love the hypnotic dabblings of, say, Khanate, the title track serves as a pleasant reminder of how good this style of metal is when done safely albeit confidently.
If Amarok were intending to focus on a hour-long stretch of pretty much the same sound, they've done a damned good job. Granted, it's harder than it looks on paper to create this style of music, never mind repeat it until it becomes an inescapable emotional void, but the fact remains that
Devoured is essentially a decent albeit unremarkable release. If you want a complicated or indeed more finesse-inducing version of funeral doom, you won't find it here. What you will find is a repetitive, hypnotic and relentless rhythm section which has one goal in mind, but not a great deal of open-minded inspiration.
