YOB
Clearing The Path To Ascend

2.8
good

Review

by Athom EMERITUS
September 5th, 2014 | 188 replies

Release Date: 2014 | Tracklist

Review Summary: The new standard for heaviness in elevator music.

Clearing the Path to Ascend is YOB at their most minimal and primal. That is it; nothing more and nothing less. The psych flourishes are gone. Their limber song structures have been replaced with a single reverberating thread that is pulled taught at either end. This is traditional doom at its most austere. There is no room for any outside emotion in Mike Scheidt and Co.'s bleak tapestry of riffs. In a way it is almost suffocating. Where a band like Swans' most recent record is claustrophobic under its own haughty weight, YOB create that same aural neurosis with only a handful of slow, lumbering chords. It's a little much, but metal has never been about subtlety.

Clearing the Path to Ascend walks the fine line between affection and tedium. From the very get go, YOB masterfully hone their bleak and desolate atmosphere and wield it like a battering ram. Every droning power chord is encumbered with an incalculable weight that shakes its very foundations to the point where they noticeably are about to crumble. Yet, whenever the songs feel as if they are finally about to break loose in their full fury, they remain stubbornly attached to their hulking restraints, bolting them in place from above. It's the same game perfected by Earth at their most droning. Yet, where albums like Earth 2 and Hibernaculum thrived in the tension created by withholding that singular moment of rapturous crescendo, Clearing the Path to Ascend drowns. There is no release. There is no great revealing. All we are left with is four songs with four riffs. Mighty as those riffs may be, they go nowhere. Sure, they are nice, and yes, they are heavy as can be, but there is no real payoff after investing on average over fifteen minutes per song. Because of this, throughout its course Clearing the Path to Ascend evolves from a powerful force into nothing more than a gently recurring note in the background. When boiled down to its essence, YOB have set the bar for heaviness in elevator music.

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