Review Summary: The enchantments of the dark ritual begins.
Hailing from Eugene, Oregon musical mastermind Mike Scheidt and his brainchild YOB have spent the last two decades building themselves up as one of the most unique and sonically audacious projects of contemporary heavy metal. By infusing the elements of doom metal, stoner rock, sludge metal and even drone/progressive rock they created a sound that defies the way we usually approach music. The riffs are extremely thick, slow-moving and detuned, the song length regularly exceed the ten minute mark and the hypnotic repetitive rhythm they build themselves upon create an experience that is both meditative yet skull and ear-shattering. This of course make them both an exceptional as well as little known band that requires a specific and acquired taste. They most well-known records are such masterworks such as “Catharsis” or “The Illusion of Motion”, albums that are grand both terms of their scope and delivery. Compared to them the band’s first record “Elaborations of Carbon” may pale, but it’s still a solid, strong slab of doom that marks a perfect genesis for their musical development.
The album contains six songs and a 70 minute length making the band’s longest to date. The first one “Universe Throb” establishes the feel and overall atmosphere of the record, as well as what we can expect from this band. The ten minute long opener begins with more than 90 seconds of guitar feedback noises, before even the first chords enter. Raw, dissonant and repetitive riffs echo along with the equally sluggish bass and drums for the next two minutes than we pick up the pace with a straighter, headbanging tempo and Scheidt’s nasal, frequently high vocals which are buried under studio effects and the riffs just add up to the doped up, spaced out feeling that this song carries.
If you read all this and immediately associate to stoner metal legends Sleep, don’t be surprised I did that too. In fact one of the major positives of the album that all six songs manages to carry a unique identity that separates them from each other thus preventing the danger of lacking variety and monotony. If “Universe Throb” sounded like the cacophonic drone of the early works of the band Earth only with an actual structure, then “All The Children Forgotten” sounds like a slowed-down update on Black Sabbath with an amazingly catchy chorus and some unexpected death metal like growls from Scheidt. With its bluesy hard rock rhythms “Clearing Seeing” is the most accessible track on the record, often sounding like a sludgy cross between Soundgarden and Helmet. “Pain of I” is a dark, vicious hallways of death/doom accords, unorthodox pacing and vocals that reminded me of latter year Celtic Frost. An interesting track, but definitely my least favorite on the album.
Of course the major setpieces are the longest songs: “Revolution” and “Asleep in Asmara” puts the listener patience in test with their monolithic 16-17 minute length. The dense, stoner inspired yet doomish riffs chug, tore and grind with unrelenting and unstoppable confidence through the multiple songs sections with Scheidt’s voice shrieking and diving among them like a haunted ghost. The occasional guitar solos spark from vivid energy and intuition, Lowell Iles’s bass flows like a river of mud and slime, the drums are tribal and ritualistic in their continuous motion.
“Elaborations of Carbon” doesn’t quite achieve the effect of later YOB albums due to its rather poor production values and sometimes efficient but other times less coherent songwriting that clings a bit too much to its predecessors. However that doesn’t stops it from a being hard-hitting, enjoyable and ultra-heavy metal album that manages to capture the band’s spirit and unique features at their infancy. As the foundation stone that they built upon its more than competent.
