Day: June 9, 2015

Pierre Laube’s path on the pain paved roads of death doom continues with his solo project Doomed; this Wrath Monolith is the fourth album in just three years and confirms the German musician’s constant progress from a compositional point of view. The interpretation of the genre by Laube continues to be characterized by a harsh and sometimes dissonant impact, but the melodic flashes now appear better integrated and more functional to the overall performance. As always, stands out a guitar work with rather personal traits that, in a song like Euphoria’s End, goes to touch technical death territories. Wrath Monolith evokes, as most of the records of the genre, a painful discomfort, but it does so in a less immediate and evocative way than other bands and this ends up being a merit, as it denotes Pierre’s will not to rest on predictable solutions but, on the other hand, it makes it extremely complex to memorize the individual songs. If, for personal taste, I would obviously prefer a greater presence of melodic openings, also because when this happens the sound benefits thanks to compositional abilities however well above average, I can’t help but notice how every Doomed release has become a guarantee of quality, accentuated by the rather personal and recognizable traits, despite the still relatively short artistic life of the project. The same well-established belonging to the Solitude’s roster suggests, somehow, a certain affinity to the less accessible fringe of the Russian scene, consisting of bands such as Abstract Spirit and Who Dies In Siberian Slush, just to mention two of the most known, just for its use of sounds that are granted with parsimony to easy melodic solutions. Yet another very good album, then, but wanting to play the part of the insatiable for once I’d like Laube to resort more frequently to solutions such as the melancholy solo of Our Ruin Silhouette (by the way, in addition to the green background cover, is also maintained the habit of giving a song the same title of the previous album), since a similar evocative power can not and should not remain an almost isolated case within a single track, rather than an entire tracklist. That said, those who have appreciated the previous works will not be disappointed by this latest effort of Doomed, while I continue to wait with confidence the final work, the one capable of raising the name to the highest levels, from which we are not too far away.

2015 – Solitude Productions