Like the great Vuoksi river pouring its secrets into Lake Saimaa, the ancient Finnish Doomdeath cult of Unholy‘s second album is an hypnotic and psychoactively charged procession of swirling currents towards an expanded state of consciousness. ‘The Second Ring of Power’ is maybe a controversial selection for this week’s album, with its emphasis on a funereal pace that is practically unable to propagate riffs in a manner recognisable to Death Metal connoseuirs, the heavy use of keyboards and even clean female vocals, but this is no less an auspicious choice and as far from the effeminate Doom Metal of the past 15 years imaginable. If Pestilence were under the influence of Mescalin during the recording of ‘Spheres‘, it might have sounded something like this, although the spacey and downright evil keyboards by and large subordinates the guitarwork, still informed by the likes of Celtic Frost via. Unholy’s former incarnation of Holy Hell, which simplified this style yet injected it with some mysterious flavours. Beneath this recipe is a blissfully undulating bass line that connects the various mood premises of the songs to wider, meditatively layered soundscapes and adjusts the mind’s eye to synchronise it’s vision with the eternal and omniscient cosmic consciousness as guitars release streams of radically transformed melody, riding the endless waves of bass. Further influences, from the sonic incense of Dead Can Dance to the ethereal and evil rock of the Cocteau Twins are pulled in at points to enhance the ritualistic and trippy elements, but the brutal death vocals and the spirit of nihilistic awakening ensure this album remains a proud classic of the unholy left hand’s own path to Divinity.
Filed under: Death Metal Album of the Week — Tags: Death Metal, Doom Metal, Doomdeath, Finnish Death Metal, Finnish Doom Metal, Mysticism — ObscuraHessian @ April 17, 2010 23:51 — Comments (0)