Band:	Abske Fides
Album:	Abske Fides
Style:	Death doom metal
Release date:	June 2012

01. The Consequence Of The Other
02. Won't You Come
03. The Coldness Of Progress
04. Aesthethic Hallucination Of Reality
05. 4.48
06. Embroided In Reflections

Brazil's Abske Fides have been making doom metal for nearly 10 years now. After a demo and two EPs they present an extremely solid, enjoyable, and downright delicious debut on Solitude Productions. Moods of dismal death doom dominate the landscape alongside some unexpectedly classic clean guitar work.

Murky distortion falls over the dark riffing. The hopelessness of doom metal is clear, yet there is a beauty to it. Songs like "The Coldness of Progress" feature clean, even bluesy, guitars, which bring a classic, vintage vibe. All of a sudden you're listening to a great doom album while sitting on the brown shag carpet of someone's smoky basement while wearing orange polyester pants. Trust me. It just works.

But just like that it's back to the present for some more crushing doom.

Tempos vary nicely and the 4th track, "Aesthetic Hallucination Of Reality," has a bitterly slow middle that recalls the band's funeral doom past. This is indeed lovely and haunting, and shows their versatility. The clean guitars break us out of this sad state for another 70s-inspired bridge back into modern doom. There are even moments of gritty, clean vocals sneaking in toward the end of the album and completing a really excellent atmosphere as well as complementing the groove that the rhythm section is allowed to explore.

Personal preference: I don't like metal songs inlaid with spoken dialogue or movie quotes. I just don't. You might. But I don't. I find it distracting. The second track opens with a few lines built in that are appropriately creepy, then they're over and we can get to the music. Fine. But the entire last track is primarily dialogue under some atmospheric music that would have been a fine closer on its own.

You'll find lots of changes here on this debut but no transition is ever jarring or out of place. Some songs lack a definable arc and seem to wander a bit? but I can't say that anything ever struck me as wrong, more like I expected to see that a new track had begun where one hadn't. Instead, it's more like a dream, where settings change in an instant but you never question it.

Hear the album at bandcamp.