Ramesses "We Will Lead You to Glorious Times" CD
[This Dark Reign]
Holy shit... try to ignore the fact that most of the layout on this thing looks like shit and doesn't represent the music at all, because this is some absolutely punishing doom metal featuring former members of Electric Wizard, and I'm all over it. Expect churning chord progressions and pounding percussion with slow paced tempos and an excellent sense of sinister melody. And the vocals? Fucking inhuman. The snarls are deep and rest under a veil of totally fucked up effects that make them blend in perfectly with the instruments and create a really dark and bitter sound. The song structures tend to be fairly long and repetitive, with the droning "Witchampton" reaching an almost Godflesh level at times. "Master Your Demons" is shorter and has more of a sludgy vibe, with distant vocals that are sort of a yelled singing - not as dismal and oppressive as the opener at all, but still quite good for this style. And make no mistake, when it starts to blast into some black metal picking patterns and brings in those dissonant notes once more, it really does have an eerie lean to it. "Ramesses II" is the shortest piece at just under five minutes, having a similar vibe to the bulk of "Master Your Demons", but with deeper and more abstract vocals that are totally indecipherable. "Black Domina" ends things off with more than 11 minutes of complete mastery, alternating between slick clean guitars under watery effects with whispered vocals and more of the deep snarls against plodding distorted chords and frantic percussive fills. I really like the production as well. The percussion is fairly dry and natural, while the bass and guitars are fighting for space amidst all of their gruffly distorted textures. I love that though, because the distortion is really thick and nasty, but not so raw that it feels problematic. And the vocals are very deep in the heart of it all, almost being overpowered by the music... but that creates an intense atmosphere and actually sounds very cool here. But the layout? As mentioned it basically stinks. It's inconsistent as hell, to say the least. The cover is simplistic and uses high contrast imagery and very little color, which I like. But everything else? Poorly executed Photoshop effects and hideously colored psychedelic styled imagery with busy text and a jumbled appearance that really looks quite bad. The lyrics kind of tie into that abstractness a bit, albeit more effectively: "Some of us are more doomed than others, Move into the white light, Step into suicide, Bleakest acid deceit, Crippled wolf I are we..." But god damn, an EP this destructive needs strong visuals to match its musical might. The CD-Rom portion of the disc contains videos for "Master Your Demons" and "Ramesses II", but I could only get them to play without audio. No matter, though, as the bland band shots and boring psychedelic types of images aren't very interesting and sort of fall under the same category as the packaging: It just doesn't match the force of the music. I'm a stickler for quality visual aesthetics, what can I say? Fuck it though, because the music kills, and I would totally recommend this to all fans of the genre. Keep an eye on these guys. I want a fucking full-length immediately. (7/10)
Running time - 30:23, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: Witchampton, Black Domina]
This Dark Reign Recordings - http://www.devildollrecords.com

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