Band:	Graves At Sea
Album:	The Curse That Is
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	April 01, 2016
A review by:	Auntie Sahar

01. The Curse That Is
02. Dead Eyes
03. Tempest
04. The Ashes Made Her Beautiful
05. This Mental Sentence
06. The Waco 177
07. Luna Lupus Venator
08. Minimum Slave

How does a cult status band confined to a demo and a few EPs strike powerfully with their first full length album? Holy shit, ladies and gentlemen, Graves At Sea appear to be providing an answer to this philosophical conundrum.

The music of Graves At Sea can basically be described as meat and potatoes doom. There are few nuances or tricks to the game being played here on their The Curse That Is debut, but in many ways there don't necessarily need to be. As is the case with, say, Conan, the tracks here are simple, hard hitting, and groovy, and somehow that's all they need to be to have the effect of being pretty decent bangers. The only real complaint that can be made here is that the tempo of the band seems to variate very little throughout this album, if at all. It's a pretty minor issue, but I for one would've found it a little more interesting if Graves At Sea had picked up the pace a bit here and there into faster, sludgier terrain, a la High On Fire, perhaps. And yet, that's not what these guys are really about, for better or worse.

With most tracks clocking in at the 7 minute + mark, one would think that such a simplistic formula would begin to lag after a while, but this is far from being the case. Somehow Graves At Sea manage to take enough twists and turns to make things interesting, while still keeping their approach direct and to the point. "Dead Eyes" is an excellent example, with how it transitions into just drum and bass around the 7 minute mark, continues banging out for a while, and then ends with a more relaxed, atmospheric ending. Most pleasantly surprising of all was "The Ashes Made Her Beautiful," with the beautiful violin work that opens it. This would almost feel gimmicky if not for the fact that Graves At Sea later continue to weave this instrument in and out of the rest of the 15 minute track. It would indeed be interesting to see what would happen if the band expanded on this type of sound more.

On the whole, The Curse That Is is a fairly strong "debut" from a band that have until now just been dropping small glimpses of their real potential. While their previous demo and split EPs have certainly had quality material, they've been mere teasers, appetizers of sorts. With The Curse That Is, however, we finally get the full course. And it's quite a tasty one, indeed.

Bring the fork and knife. You'll need it.