The Slow Death – Siege
Release Date: 27th August 2021
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Funeral Doom, Death Metal.
FFO: Mournful Congregation, Evoken, Esoteric, Illimitable Dollor, Doom:VS, Stone Wings, Aeonian Sorrow.
Review By: Martha Skourteli
These days being a big fan of any genre doesn’t mean that you know all the bands that are out there no matter how much you search all the time. You’ll always miss something less or more important. With that being said I must admit that I feel a bit embarrassed that I never paid much attention to The Slow Death. The name was familiar but I never spent enough time to know them…..until now!
And that’s where I started questioning myself. It took me seconds after I put Siege to play to have my jaw dropped!
The Slow Death are an Australian band originating from Sydney. They’re related to Illimitable Dolor while their members have also been in bands like Stone Wings and Murkrut (Australia has indeed a very good base of doom bands that are really worth listening to).
Siege consists of 4 lengthy songs that will take 1 hour 3 minutes of your time and fill it with really very good Funeral Doom/Death metal of the best quality (this is gonna be the key word in this review for reasons that will become very obvious if you listen to what I’m listening for the 5th time in a row today).
There’s nothing I’d say I don’t like about this album. It’s like a puzzle where each piece fits in the right place. For me it’s a beautiful painting I can look at for hours and still not get enough of it.
“Tyranny”, the intro song, starts with a beautiful guitar (I always say to people that my taste in doom is strongly related to how good guitar riffs and melodies sound and the information my brain gets from them). Well, Stuart Prickett does exactly this playing The Slow Death guitars. It’s like his guitar is grabbing your hand to take you where your heart wants to go. You just don’t want this to end and surely enough it goes like this all the way to the end of each song to start again when the next one starts. Divine melodies explaining what “inspiration” means that just don’t take a break. Whether it’s a calm minute with nice and clear sound or the heavy slow change crawling under your skin that is walking hand in hand with the drums to build a darker atmosphere, these guitars will haunt you throughout the whole album.
Mandy Andresen on the other hand has an amazing voice that I would easily put in the category of Anneke Van Giersbergen. If I needed one word for her vocals I would choose Quality! (I mentioned before that quality is gonna be the key word in this review). In the near future she can easily be mentioned as one of the best in the genre.
Less male vocals than what I was expecting but of the right volume. Gamaliel, who replaced the late singer of the band Gregg Williamson, is doing a great job with growling vocals where necessary. Didn’t expect less after I got deeper in the band’s work. The type of voice I can think of for this music.
We usually consider the combination of female and male vocals as mainly something we find in the gothic doom sub genre. This is not the case though with The Slow Death!
I’m not gonna leave out the other two members, Yonn McLaughlin on drums and Dan Garcia on bass, because without them we wouldn’t get the absolute 100% of this perfection.
The other 3 songs of the album, “Famine”, “Pestilence” and “Ascent of the flames” will keep you enslaved to what “Tyranny” started without a second giving you a slight chance to escape (not that you will want to). You’ll have to distance yourself from your environment and sink in the beauty of 4 extremely well composed and performed songs. I still don’t know which one to choose as a favourite…
After spending 3 days now exploring all of their music (4 full length albums plus a split with Majestic Downfall), which is full of songs written by very talented, splendid musicians that create monumental music and seem absolutely devoted to gain a position on the highest level of the genre. I strongly believe that if there are any other doom fans out there like me that have missed this specific band, Siege is a very good reason to rush out and search for their music. I’m 100% sure you won’t regret it.
(5 / 5)
