Band:	Septic Mind
Album:	Истинный Зов [The True Call]
Style:	Funeral doom metal
Release date:	October 24, 2011
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. Истинный Зов
02. Обречён Грешить
03. Планета Больна

The True Call marks the sophomore effort by happy-go-lucky Russians of Septic Mind.

In the past year or so, I've reviewed 28 albums for Solitude Productions (and sub-labels), and Septic Mind's prior effort, 2010's The Beginning was easily my favorite of the lot. It violated me, leaving me curled up in fetal position in the shower, scouring away with Lava soap and a brillo pad while incoherently and repeatedly muttering "Unclean! Unclean!"

Being a sequel of sorts, and a sequel to an album I was particularly blown away by, it suffers from the dreaded high bar of lofty expectations... and The True Call fell a bit short.

Structurally they don't deviate from the basic approach of the last album. The release contains three songs, all of which are slower and longer than a 20 mile rush hour commute on the LA freeway. The three tracks have slow, trippy ambien(t) moments and crushing doom at a pace that makes a snail's crawl look like blitzkrieg in comparison. Well, the closer, "Planet Is Sick" is an upbeat ditty that might keep up with that snail.

The slow, trippy ambient bits seem improved a tad from last time, some reminiscent of watching old Tom Baker-era Doctor Who while having a bad trip. There is a little post-y element tossed in to the intro segment of "Doomed To Sin."

The psychedelia often continues bleeding into and tainting the doomed passages, giving it a quality similar to Esoteric, which can be construed as complimentary given that band's position at the top of that niche of the doom genre.

The letdown mostly comes from the doom in this one... Perhaps repeated listens to The Beginning helped me develop a bit of a tolerance to it, but this one does not seem to pack quite the same impact. Some of it is the presence of psychotropic currents, to be sure. But this one, particularly in the production, seems to have smoothed out some of the abrasive elements.

Sure the music is still horrifying and an affront to all humanity... but less so.

While The Beginning was sonic Ebola that had you hemorrhaging internal organs out your ear holes, The True Call is more akin to Consumption. And not the good kind of consumption (you know, booze!), but the TB kind.

And in closing, it must be said that while I referred to this as a "let down", it was merely comparative to their prior release... The True Call still gives a heavy sack beating to most the "extreme" doom (brought to you by Mountain Dew... or is it Mountain Dewm?) I've heard and reviewed this year. This is a really good album that will wafflestomp your soul.