Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Album Review: "Sins of the Elders" by Conclave

Sins of the Elders
What causes a genre of music to go out of fashion?

What made disco a fad rather than a revolution? Grunge? New Wave?

How is it that millions of listeners could suddenly become fed up with a style of music that they had loved so very much? This is something that makes very little sense to me.

About two years ago, a mix tape that I had made in the past surfaced. Shocking to no one, I still loved all of the bands on that tape and still owned most, if not all of those albums.

That's kind of a long way round, or off course way of describing doom metal. Well actually it's not...so much. Doom Metal or Stoner Metal is the logical next step of metal evolution from Black Sabbath, but that style of music never took off, until much later.

Conclave
First of all: Support indie metal!

There, now, let's begin.

Conclave sports all of the prerequisites for being doom metal, or stoner metal if you'd prefer.

Their songs are long, flowing, and slow.

The guitars sound like rusty chainsaws being played through a cracked speaker.

Unlike standard issue doom metal, they tend to create some riffs with swagger. The only other like minded band in my mind that does this is Karma To Burn. There's most likely others, but no one knows everyone.

Conclave doesn't just play slow, warbling tunes with underwater vocals there. They play long songs, yes, the listener will get their money's worth on this one. Most of the tunes clock in around 7 minutes or longer.

The best thing to be said about Conclave is their variety. From swaggering blues riffs, to alternate picked death metal riffs, they're just crossing vast, desolate lands of sound.

Pained vocals buttressed by growls coexist with the guitars. The vocals are weaved in and out of the mix, from far in the back to right up front.

Sins of the Elders is the best doom metal to cross my desk in 2016.

Release: 6/10/16
Genre: Doom Metal
Label: DIY
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