Well, I’ve played it numerous times while lying down in bed, stoned as hell, and I fell asleep all the times. But to really say that it’s good is a bit too much I say. I have come to discover that there are a lot of directions you can take doom metal to, but not all of them are comfortable to listen to.

 

And this one is an excellent example of that issue. The music Catacombs makes is best entitled (death)funeral doom I guess, due to the constant presence of a melodic guitar playing high tones. There of course is the heavy rhythm section, with bass, drums and a guitar, throwing out riffs and beats that are slower than a sloth. This is all mixed very heavy and trembling, but the melodic funeral guitar isn’t. It’s mixed very thin and insecure sounding, which makes it an irritating factor in the music.

Then there are the vocals, if you can call them that. The singer in question’s only ability is to throw out a prehistoric grunt made by some kind of very tired, large vegetarian dinosaur that is lying down after a day of foraging in the forest and being hunted down by some carnivorous monsters. And he does that at least once every thirty seconds, and I already got irritated after the first ten-minute song. Can you guess how I felt after this over an hour lasting album?

 

Well, to give the answer to that question, I was pissed of as hell. This is not my type of doom, the music just needed better mixing but the vocals are impossible to listen to for me. Too bad. Something worth mentioning here as well is the fact that this is a solo project by a man named John Del Russi who previously had a band called Hierophant. Impressing that he did all of the instruments and vocals by himself, but unfortunately it is not working for me.