Review Summary: Stand Back, Behold
Out of every possible summary I could ever come up with that one struck me the hardest, the perfect way to describe this album, just stand back and enjoy the ride, and its gonna be a scary one, one that will make you realize that when sludge/doom metal & little bits of black metal mix up the profit can be beyond what you’d expect.
Born from the departure of several members of Electric Wizard, Ramsses is a Sludge/doom metal band, and a good one at that, with a drone like sound, pummeling your brains into a soft mushy substance, the riffs are big, the drumming is outstanding and the vocals are in a league of its own.
Opener “Iron Crow” starts off with a very raw-y sounds, which is only a bit of a build up until the vocals strike you, the vocalist maintains a very High On Fire-ish sound on the vocals, but he is more than capable than showing pretty outstanding gutturals and shrieks as well (See “Terrasaw”).
The riffs, they are meaty, sludgy, pummeling and relentless, I once read somewhere that they claimed this to be the “Heaviest Band Out There” since I’m not particularly familiar with the genre I will try to keep an objective view on this, although I might also add, They could be goddamn right about it, now I also might want to add that this isn’t the kind of band that’s heavy for the sake of being heavy, it can have pretty sweet buildups (See “Terrasaw” again”) and completely shift gears when you wouldn’t even imagine it see “Black Hash Mass” as an example, the song starts off very sludgy with a almost drone rhythm in the guitars, then about halfway through it shifts to a full on black metal assault with tremolo picked riffing and shrieking vocals only to be brought back to the sludgy nature of the song once again.
Another thing that I might want to add as a plus is the fact that the band is very un-repetitive, with a multitude of styles, time changes, and over all diversity this record never gets dull (see the change from “Take The Curse” to the instrumental “Vinho Dos Mortos”), also add a skit here and there to make things just a tad more interesting.
The only drawback? This kind of metal might not appeal to everybody but overall, I recommend this record to pretty much anyone ready for a taste of the Sludge/Doom Metal, you won’t regret it.
