Band:	Antubel
Album:	Promo 2003
Style:	Funeral doom metal
Release date:	June 2003
A review by:	Lucas

01. Days Have Died
02. The Face
03. Wretched Spectre
04. Antubel
05. Nothing

Antubel spawned in the year of 2000 as a one-woman-project of Allyn, who quickly found the help of Borja to do vocals. After three years they completed their first and last effort, titled "Promo 2003", a title which unfortunately turned out to be just as inspired as the music. Main influence seems to be the good old Deinonychus, minus the Black Metal screams of 'nonychus captain Kehren. Both bands have the same dark/gothic/romantic doom atmosphere. Only difference is that Deinonychus does it right, and Antubel does it wrong.

First of all there is the instrumentation. Most of the riffs are stale and generic, and so are the keyboard draperies. The drumming is very basic and as such not bad, but not anything good either. All of this is poured into a mould of bad distortion. Thin as it is, they should have either opted for a full-out distorted approach or simply downtune the whole bunch a bit and go without. This is neither. I would be able to forgive all of this if they would rectify it with a good deal of atmosphere, but alas, none of that either.

Then there are the vocals. One must never underestimate the risk of using crying as vocals. When the performer lacks the much needed theatrical and convincing skills, they quickly start sounding ridiculous and laughable. And that is exactly what is going on here. When he wails "why?" in his annoying, whiny tone you would simply want to punch him in the face and tell him to grow up and be a man. Not exactly what they aimed for, I reckon.

Fortunately there are also a bunch of low-pitched growls. These are actually not half bad, and in this festival of failed attempts, stand out as fairly enjoyable. While they are sparse, they are also very low and slowly bashing your brain in.

While writing this all I try to keep in mind that they are artists, have probably poured their heart and soul into their music and this is only their first attempt, but it is hard to constantly remember that. They obviously tried, but hey, it's a hard knock life, and trying is sometimes simply not good enough.

I suggest you ignore this band and search for a band called "The Craving". That is the procreation of Antubel, as the two members thought the name "Antubel" did not fit with the music. Ahem, I will keep my lame jokes to myself. Hopefully they find new inspiration under their new banner, and release some worthwhile music this time.