Californian doomsters St Vitus are legendary in the scene, and like the return of all legends it's hard to know quite how to take the oddly-titled Lillie: F-65, the band's eighth full-length and first in seventeen years. Traditional doom as a genre these days is ruled by the likes of Candlemass and The Gates Of Slumber - competing with them on their own terms is out of the question. St Vitus choose to try and reclaim the territory that they know, yet with Wino at the helm this comes over as yet another Hidden Hand-esque side-project rather than something unique and special. Judging it from the merits of the songs contained alone, it's hard not to feel a little short-changed - seven songs in just over half an hour? And with melodic interlude Vertigo and finale Withdrawal, the latter nothing but feedback, it means that you only actually get five 'songs' here, and none of them offer anything truly gripping...

Yes, sadly I can't see even the most die-hard of fans worshipping the material contained herein as worthy enough to say things like 'quality beats quantity' - if you've heard anything Wino's done in the last ten years, you've heard something as good as this. I'd easily call The Hidden Hand's 2007 opus The Resurrection Of Whiskey Foote superior, for one. So what have we actually got, here? Opening groaner Let Them Fall is the closest thing here to catchy, Wino's bewailments over a nicely-judged grooving riff quite effective. The Bleeding Ground continues in a similar style, a nicely bluesy solo spicing up an otherwise rather dull and plodding track. Blessed Night falls into the same tone of slow, traditional doom, soaked in miserable feedback, dragging deliberately and reducing such modern flippances as 'hooks' to a non-existence. By the time you've reached The Waste Of Time it's hard to see all but the hardiest of doombahs agreeing with the title and seeking their slow kicks elsewhere. This may be a comeback, but it's no triumph.