The Howling Void - The Womb Beyond The World review
| Band: | The Howling Void |
| Album: | The Womb Beyond The World |
| Style: | Funeral doom metal, Symphonic doom metal |
| Release date: | September 17, 2012 |
| A review by: | Susan |
01. The Womb Beyond The World
02. The Silence Of Centuries End
03. Lightless Depths
04. Eleleth
This album came to me labeled "symphonic funeral doom" and my interest was piqued: it's not every day that you see those two genres cozied up together. Liking this album is really dependent on you, and so I'll just say this: if you get bored by funeral doom, or if you roll your eyes at the prominent use of keyboards, turn back now.
If long passages of slow music don't bore you, then this would be the perfect soundtrack to an evening of mediation. Lie down, close your eyes, and imagine yourself walking down a long, dim hallway. There are doors on either side, maybe you go in one and see your future, maybe you continue down the hallway until it turns into an open field at dusk, with distant stars lending the only light, save the quickly disappearing orb over the horizon. Maybe?
So, the keyboards are very prominent in terms of being the tool for providing atmosphere. Usually they layer on the mood quite nicely but a few random times they really cross the line into being obvious and a little hokey. You've been warned. Take a deep breath, it'll pass. If you can get over it then you may find the mood darkly beautiful at some points and subtly epic at others (especially the final track "Eleleth"), and you'll really get to appreciate what else is going on with the well mixed guitars and drums and the sparsely used vocals, which are of the harsh and pained variety.
In addition to the atmospheric keyboards, this one-man-band deftly applies the guitars and drums to add the real substance and weight to the music. I won't say it goes so far as "crushing" but it gets close. It's slightly warmer than that, and somehow not 1000% hopeless like so much of this genre loves to be. That sets it apart, for me, that it's more of a chose-your-own-adventure doom album than a you're-going-to-commit-suicide-by-the-end doom album. And that can be quite refreshing.
Listen and buy at Bandcamp.
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Written on 30.09.2012 by
Susan appreciates quality metal regardless of sub-genre. Metal Storm Staff since 2006. Twitter: @HeavyMetalSusan |
Comments
Comments: 12
Visited by: 238 users
| Monolithic ♠♠♠ Posts: 669  |
Thanks for the review. I'm a bit doubtful over this because something tells me this is either a great album or one that fails to meet my expectations in any way I could possibly expect from an album to be interesting and intriguing. Maybe I should give it a try. After all, I'm no stranger to this genre. 
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| Susan Smeghead Elite Posts: 6941  |
Behradeth, I added their bandcamp link to the end of the review. You're probably much more of a funeral doom expert than I so let me know what you think!
---- "A life all mine Is what I choose At the end of my days" --The Gathering "A Life All Mine" from Souvenirs
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| CobiWan1993 Secundum Filium Posts: 1365  |
"Symphonic funeral doom" sounds intriguing, I may need to check this album out sometime. 
---- Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe (Lao Tzu).
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| Cynic Metalhead Ambrish Saxena Posts: 7561  |
I came to know about this album from "Solitude production" and indeed it's a great stuff. I picked this album after listening "Wedding in Hades" which eventually was an awesome album too but "The Womb" has just own me. After long times I guess I was listening to back-to-back two dark funeral metal albums. Quote: May be I dream about all these but I really don't know but it's true that whenever I put this disc on...close my eyes and GO FOR REALLY TIGHT SLEEP. So much so tight that next morning when I woke up like 12 in the morning i ended up missing my crucial office hours. So, from last week, I'm just keeping away from this album. I don't know why...but yeah it is.
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| Merchant of Doom Posts: 702  |
Written by Cynic Metalhead on 30.09.2012 at 10:22 Wedding In Hades are gothic death/doom... BTW, The Womb is a big improvement on the previous one...
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| Marcel Hubregtse Grumpy Old Fuck Elite Posts: 40071  |
Written by Merchant of Doom on 30.09.2012 at 16:13 Here you make it sound you didn't like the previous album that much whereas this is what you said in the comments on the previous album.... Quote: So that would mean that if you consider The Womb a big improvement that The Womb would score a 10 or even higher
---- Member of the true crusade against European Flower Metal Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is out of sight Dawn Crosby (r.i.p.) 05.04.1963 - 15.12.1996 
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| Boxcar Willy yr a kook Posts: 9155  |
This is fuggin' awesome, so enveloping and crushing.
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| Merchant of Doom Posts: 702 |
Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 30.09.2012 at 16:48 gosh, Marcel, you have time to waste checking my previous posts on The Howling Void... I would say 9.5, then...
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| Evil Chip Posts: 505  |
Nice review, you really catched the image from the music. Good album but it didn't intrigued me at all. The keyboards pads alone sound really bad.
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| R'Vannith ghedengi Elite Posts: 3099  |
Sounds good so far, the keyboards give it a nice spacey atmosphere at times. They make it more immediately engaging than funeral doom usually does for me. Something to hold onto while you're walking down that hallway, that's a nice image.
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| BitterCOld The Ancient One Admin Posts: 15287  |
Definitely will be checking this out. was piqued when they emailed the digi promo, moreso after your review. love the Choose Your Own reference. sadly, that reference will be lost on many. (then again, so is the notion of books, i suppose.)
---- get the fuck off my lawn. Beer Bug Virus Spotify Playlist crafted by Nikarg and I. Feel free to tune in and add some pertinent metal tunes!
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| Monolithic ♠♠♠ Posts: 669 |
Written by Susan on 30.09.2012 at 04:29 uh me? not at all. I don't even consider myself to be an expert in what I like the most, let alone an entire genre.  I found Ryan Wilson to be an expert in not letting instruments overlay one another and that signifies how the man focuses at precision, you know...not just creating something ominous and heavy to encourage a sense of guilt and despair, and that's not even correct because I find his music to be something like a meditation in dark landscapes. Kinda spooky if you're familiar with dark landscapes and what feelings you're gonna get when you get into them. This...exceeded all my expectations indeed. PS:sorry for the late reply.
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