Mythological Cold Towers – Immemorial

site | label | buy

Despite having existed for a good number of years, Mythological Cold Towers have gone relatively unnoticed outside of the doom metal scene, a situation made worse by the rather lengthy time since their last album, The Vanished Pantheon. Six years on, Immemorial sees the band engage a more fundamental approach to the doom-death genre, invoking influences such as genre innovators My Dying Bride to create impossibly slow and gloomy metal. The big emphasis is on slow – as impressively epic as the band’s sound is, a large and almost echoing guitar sound that implies a large spaciousness, the band’s music is certainly not for those that attribute metal to energy and speed. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but Immemorial does have other more stressing issues. Mostly, Immemorial is a little lacking in variation – beyond the first few songs, the album does tend to feel like it is simply regurgitating itself, simply repeating the same riffs and the same vocal delivery until the album’s runtime is over. The album does try and do some new things near its close, but at that point the album’s slow monotony is likely to get the better of all of the most staunchest of doom fanatics. It isn’t as emotional and involving as perhaps the band thinks it is, and overall whilst it starts off sounding good, a fundamental lack of musical innovation makes the album draining.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2011, Albums, Doom Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Mythological Cold Towers