Band:	Eremit
Album:	Bearer Of Many Names
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	June 2021

01. Enshrined In Indissoluble Chains And Enlightened Darkness
02. Secret Powers Entrenched In An Ancient Artefact
03. Unmapped Territories Of Clans Without Names

This may be the Bearer Of Many Names, but it's not the bearer of many riffs. However, Eremit squeeze every last drop out of the riffs that they do write.

Eremit lurched through the door in 2019 with their debut album, Carrier Of Weight, and the album certainly earned that title; it was the kind of album that allows you to recalibrate what you consider to be 'heavy'. Yes, other extreme doom albums might hit you with slow, intense, powerful riffs, but do they smother and suffocate you with them? Because that's what Eremit did with the likes of "Dry Land", a song that somehow ran for over 20 minutes despite being a single riff played slightly differently throughout the entire song.

Eremit play sludge doom, and they do a ferocious job of combining the venom and malice of sludge with the trudging slow pace of doom, dragging listeners deep into the mire with filthy guitar tones, ponderous percussion and vicious growls, all of which are pounded into listeners via repetition, repetition, repetition. This wasn't the case on last year's Desert Of Ghouls EP, which saw the band picking up the pace, branching outwards mid-song and flirting closer to the likes of stoner metal. At the time, I felt that Eremit weren't playing to their strengths with this shift in perspective; having now heard Bearer Of Many Names, that viewpoint has been thoroughly cemented.

Like Carrier Of Weight, there are three songs on Bearer Of Many Names, but this time around, the song titles are just as lengthy as the songs themselves. "Enshrined In Indissoluble Chains And Enlightened Darkness" runs for just shy of 30 minutes, and unsurprisingly it's in no hurry to get things moving. The first fifth of the song (that's 6 minutes) consists entirely of the central motif of the track repeated again and again on clean guitar, with only the odd bit of percussion to sustain any kind of momentum. More surprisingly, once the metal does arrive, it's in a more aggressive form than was encountered on Carrier Of Weight, as Eremit unleash an assault of blast beats and fast-paced guitars.

It's an interesting change of pace, but ultimately Eremit shine brightest at their slowest and filthiest, and they demonstrate that across the rest of "Enshrined?" as they slow things down, and further down, and down further still, changing the riff from groovy to putrid and shifting from screams to vile growls. The crawl to the end of this song is the sonic equivalent of wading through a swamp, and it's delightful to hear Eremit revelling in this abyss of putridity.

In comparison to "Enshrined?", the other two songs on Bearer Of Many Names, the similarly verbose "Secret Powers Entrenched In An Ancient Artefact" and "Unmapped Territories Of Clans Without Names", are positively bitesize, each clocking in at around the 18-minute mark. Of the pair, "Secret Powers?" is the more single-minded, and 'single' is entirely apt here because Eremit use only a single riff for the whole song. It's truly remarkable: a single fucking riff, for an entire 18-minute song. The fact that this isn't one of the most boring pieces of music ever written is testament to just how compelling Eremit manage to be with just a disgusting guitar tone, a hooky riff (and accompanying guitar lead), and only subtle changes in pace and intensity.

Still, as much as I admire Eremit's ability to turn the smallest idea into the most colossal of compositions, they do actually benefit from integrating some degree of evolution into their songs, as "Unmapped Territories?" is, for my money, the best thing the band have created to date. Using the opening clean guitar melody as the base from which to build the song, they set off on a potent march, actually instilling some mid-tempo groove into their sound without diminishing the appeal. Predictably, Eremit eventually revert to type by falling back into a ponderous trudge, but even as this trudge turns into a glacial crawl, the way that Eremit reintroduce a slow clean guitar melody gives a new dimension to the track, adding an ethereal atmosphere to the suffocating grind towards the end of the album.

Is Bearer Of Many Names an improvement upon the band's debut album? I mean, they're pretty much the same thing; there's subtle differences and occasional novelties such as blast beats, but ultimately you're getting huge songs that at their core rely on crushing listeners into submission through draining repetition and immense walls of sound. I think it's pretty obvious from the description here that Bearer Of Many Names will not be for everyone; however, for the twisted few that find the descriptions in the review intriguing, or who have already battled with Carrier Of Weight and come out wanting more, this album is an experience worthy of your time, even if it feels like time stands still whilst listening to it.