Band:	Grown Below
Album:	The Long Now
Style:	Doom metal, Sludge metal
Release date:	September 26, 2011
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. Trojan Horses
02. Devoid Of Age
03. The Abyss
04. Minaco II - Nebula
05. End Of All Time
06. The Long Now
07. Malklara

A couple minutes in to The Long Now, I was bracing for a long hour. It started off as yet another of what I just referred to as an "SSDD: Same Shit, Different Dudes" release. Post-Rock/Metal medium paced riffing, growled vocals.

Then the Belgian band shifted gears into the obligatory Mellow Moments phase that seemingly all these post-y acts do... and, to an extent, won me over.

Bass took primary focus while the guitars shifted to a light, floating ethereal quality. These parts were not just short little divergences from familiar mid-paced riffing, but went on for extended periods of time. Enough to ease you in and lull you to a semi-conscious blissful daze.

The vocalist shifted gear as well, to a clean sung voice... He won't be topping any best front man polls 'round these parts, but his voice was flawed and conveyed some form of sorrow that really enhanced the already particularly well done quieter voyages.

Grown Below toss in other elements, such as synthed string accompaniment, as well as some female vocals which harmonize both with the clean and growled male parts.

And perhaps another effect of these extended vacations from the distortion pedal is that when they return to (post-)"rock!" mode it makes those riffs more enjoyable as well.

The whole album seems a bit better put together and executed than a lot of the others I've reviewed this year. While it might be odd that I extol the non-\m/ sections on a review for a metal site, those sections are what will convince me to revisit the album and listen to it after the review is up...