Black Lodge - Covet (1995) ☠

Country: Norway
Language: English
Genre: Death Doom
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☠: Selected by Buccaneer

© 1995 Head Not Found
Review by Ralph Evers for Doom-Metal.com
Black Lodge is everything but cliché. Directly with the first song on this album, you can hear that this isn't easy listening. They use female vocals, but this doesn't mean that we got another beauty-and-the-beast band or gothic doom clone here. This is one of the few bands that don't use their female vox as a gimmick, instead this girl has a lot of talent and uses her whole scala of vocal capabilities combined with the very emotional touch of her angelic voice. In some way you can compare her voice to a combination between Veera Muhli (Unholy) and Anneke v. Giersbergen (The Gathering).

The music is very bleak and dissonant. Varying from utterly slow to midtempo to some spare deathmetal outbursts sometimes, this band doesn't stick to one style. The most clear example of this is the song 'Mother Urge', which in my opinion can best be described as "Hardcore Doom". Very unconventional melodies (like the nihilistic acoustic part in 'Tower Inertia') and songstructures make this album really difficult to listen to in the first place, but when you're finally through this stage, you'll discover the real beauty and musicianship of this weird band.

Every song has it's own atmosphere varying from a funeral soundtrack in the first song to oppressing madness in 'Travesty'. The production of this album is quite okay and the lyrics are, just like the music, very uncommon.

tags: black lodge, covet, 1995, flac,