ALTAR OF OBLIVION’S GRAND GESTURE OF DEFIANCE: DOOMED
Not all doom metal is created equal. Yes, bands like Pentagram and Trouble once shook things up by mixing lumbering Sabbath-esque riffs with wailed clear vocals, and often they did it well, channeling the weed-friendly heaviness that attracted many metalheads to the genre in the first place. But these records were assisted by their production and novelty. Today, some bands, like Grand Magus, have managed to update and perfect this sound with admirable results. But other bands, like Denmark’s Altar of Oblivion, make this style of heavy metal tiresome and laughable. On their latest album, Grand Gesture of Defiance, this five-piece slogs their way through six power-doom numbers that ultimately sound like parodies of themselves.
The album is not helped by its production, which brings singer Meister der Töne’s moaned vocals too far to the forefront while the remaining band members’ instruments buzz smoothly in the background. Across the board, der Töne (this guy’s just trying to call himself “Tonemaster,” right?) comes up short, his melodic groan often a bit flat or poorly harmonized, with the result being somewhere between Anubis Gate’s Henrik Fevre and Volbeat’s Michael Poulsen, all with a face reddened by strain. Opener “Where Darkness Is Late” is uninspired, while the lackluster serpentine vocal harmonies and straight-up silly deep-voiced intonations of “Sentenced In Absentia” spill all over the place. The rest of the band does their best to pick up the slack and in general they do alright, providing countless chugging riffs and bare-bones drum patterns that hint at musical competence and a love of the sound; the rumbling keyboard-backed chorus sections on “Final Perfection” have a cool black metal flavor to them. But there’s no stand-out guitar performance here, no technically-proficient blast that makes the listener stop, smirk, and check which song they’re listening to. The whole album kicks off with a shrug and ends on a meh, with annoyingly mopey doom-wail singing tacked on throughout.
What’s especially irritating about Grand Gesture of Defiance is that it feels like it’s trying to incorporate elements from multiple factions of popular metal, and it does so poorly. There’s the high voice of vest-wearing power metal, the plodding guitars of stoner-doom, the sonorous keyboards of gothic hard rock… and they all go nowhere. Doom metal’s continued popularity — and its recent resurgence as a dominant underground genre — stem from how genuine it sounds, how much of a love letter to metal’s origins it can be. Here, Altar of Oblivion are going through the motions, peddling a cheap knock-off that hardly entertains, and falls apart within the hour.
(one and a half outta five horns)
-ER
