I was unfamiliar with this band before seeing them on the promo list. I was taken by the label of "funeral doom" as I love doom in any variation. I was excited to hear a new band, and see what they bring to the table. The album itself ends up being more of a death/doom metal album with some black metal flares here and there, but certainly not the funeral doom I was expecting. Not that this is a bad thing, it was just something that took me by surprise. The first track, Between Two Worlds starts off the record with a keyboard passage lasting about 2 minutes. At this point I was still expecting a good funeral doom album. After the rest of the instruments and vocals kick in around the 3 minute mark, it becomes clear that, while being a doom based record, there isn't much "funeral" going on. You do get a very heavy, very slow doom song, with deep growls, but you can get the feeling this is no Esoteric or Shape of Despair record.

So let's take the album for the death/doom record it is. It's very strong. The music is usually a slower pace, and the vocals range from a deep, indecipherable growl to a higher-mid range scream akin to black metal. Vocally, the album is pretty well spot on the entire time, except for the slower, spoken word sections. These can be very hit or miss to me. Track 3, He Who Willingly Suffers has a great spoken section, but then the very next track The Pathway Had Been Lost has this, to me, really annoying and distracting crying section that should have been left off the album entirely.

The music on the record is played very well, and each instrument gets a chance to shine on the record, and often in each song. As mentioned before, the music is usually slower, but there are sections that speed up quite a bit. The fast section in these songs lean much more on the Death or even Black metal stylings, as heard in the opener Between Two Worlds. Also, the guitar leads on the album are a huge highlight. Despite the unneeded crying section in The Pathway Had Been Lost, the lead and screams after that are fantastic and a highlight on the album to me. Even though everything is played well, I do the get the feeling that some sections or songs tend to go on too long. The opener could be cut down for sure, and the same goes for the aforementioned He Who Willingly Suffers.

The album is very strong but certainly not perfect by any means. The songs are very heavy most of the time, and do create a great atmosphere. The band is clearly talented, and I would even say a band that should have some more recognition in this style of music (based on my experience with them anyway). However, the spoken word passages are too hit/miss and the length of the album does drag it down a bit. Also, the final track In The Desert Vast seems very anti climatic for this album, and does not really leave me with any real lasting impression. The songs are also pretty predictable and you can usually tell where each song is going. This isn't usually a genre that has a lot of "surprises" but these songs do seem to follow too strictly to a formula that gets a little boring by the end of the album.

Despite these flaws though, this is a very strong album most of the time. There is a lot of good to outweigh the bad, and fans of Doom/Death metal should check this out. Feel free to check out my favorite track, He Who Willingly Suffers which shows off pretty much all the aforementioned aspects of the band, on YouTube.