Band:	Centurions Ghost
Album:	The Great Work
Style:	Sludge metal
Release date:	2007
A review by:	Marcel Hubregtse

01. The Supreme Moment
02. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
03. Only The Strong Can Survive
04. Black Hearts Will Break
05. The Great Work
06. Bedbound (In The House Of Doom)
07. Specimen No. 7
08. In Defiance
09. Walking Through Walls
10. I Am God, You Are Denied

Having missed Centurions Ghost's 2005 A Sign Of Things To Come debut album this is my first acquaintance with this bunch of UK doomsters although they have already acquired quite a name for themselves on the back of the said debut and by playing at well-known doom festivals such as the German Doom Shall Rise and the Dutch Doom Day. And I am now sorely regretting this.

Judging, solely based, on the cover artwork I was expecting a retro traditional doom band. The first minute of noise emitting from my speakers didn't do anything to exorcise that notion from my head, but then when The Supreme Moment proper kicks in I am scrambling for the cd booklet to check if this actually the right cd in my player. Yes, it is. No retro trad doom here, though doom it still is. The first thing that clearly steers away from the pitfall of old school doom are the vocals which are shouted and spitted out more in a post noisecore Neurosis sort of way. Also musically Centurions Ghost don't have too much in common with traditional doom. Like the accompanying biography the band's approach also takes in elements of death, thrash, black and hardcore therefore making it no easy beast to either tame or categorise. One second your thrown into one corner only to be pummelled over the head by bludgeoning hardcore vocals, thrash bass, blackish death guitar, doom guitar, and drums which are too up-tempo for your usual doom band the next but all of which is somehow always still firmly rooted in that doom foundation.

Centurions Ghost are a band that once again proves that doom isn't solely about slow plodding music but is more about an approach and a general feel to the music, or if you will, a certain type of mindset. Because of this a band such as the way too early departed and already, by many, sorely missed, Keen Of The Crow, keeps springing to mind. Musically almost impossible to pigeonhole but in essence still 120% doom.

What I am trying to say is: Stop trying to make sense of what I am trying to get across. Just go out there and check Centurions Ghost out. A must for all doom fans with a penchant for off-kilter doom, and also worth checking out for people who think that doom is just only slow plodding music grabbing back to the Black Sabbath catalogue.

Having absorbed The Great Work I am still banging my head against the wall for not knowing about these guys before and that surely breaks my black heart.


Prize songs: The Supreme Moment, In Defiance, I Am God, You Are Denied.