Göden – Vale of the Fallen
Release Date: 17th May 2024
Label: Svart Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Doom
FFO: Winter
Review By: Paul Cairney
Vale of the Fallen by New York doom outfit Göden. The bands 2nd album, it is described as ‘a walk through a post-apocalyptic landscape in the bleakest imaginable conditions’. This should be a clue to the album. Bleak and desolate, it is a tough listen.
10 tracks and 42 minutes long, Vale of the Fallen has slow, almost monolithic riffs, although they are not as heavy as you would expect, when you realise that the bands creator was Stephen Flam, the creative force behind Winter. The album is also littered with interludes, offering ‘brief respites’ between the slow, deliberate riffs.
It is the deliberate, ponderous form of the riffs that is the downfall of the album. There is absolutely zero spark across the run-time and, coupled with the interludes, you are led through a C45 cassette length of consummate boredom.
The interludes? Awful! Why break up a slow album? Why have a ridiculous monologue lasting 3 minutes and 51 seconds? This is self-indulgence at its absolute peak. The self-indulgence, to quote Nigel Tufnel, ‘goes up to 11’. The fact they follow this monologue with a paint-watchingly dull instrumental just adds insult to injury.
There are a couple of more listenable tracks, but to be blunt, I can’t remember anything about them except that ‘that song’s ok-ish’. It is these borderline acceptable tracks that actually disappoint you, as you realise that the overriding dull, unfettered pretentiousness of Vale of the Fallen could, and perhaps should, have been forgotten.
This is a misstep that Göden could struggle to recover from.
(1.5 / 5)
