Murky Ratmass

This is a sludgy doom project, a duo, featuring the singing, keyboards and guitar work of Mandy, formerly of Lycanthia fame. The fact that the second member – the drummer is also a woman should have no bearing on the music, or this review, but if my mentioning of this fact makes you more inclined to seek this recording out – then I am glad.

In a lot of ways this is quite unusual – Doom Metal that does not ascribe to one or the other dictum within that genre is difficult to come by and this is a rare example of it: doom metal that follows its own path. Initially this reminded me of slow Sadistik, but allusions to other artists are nebular from that point on.

First of all the production is rather good; dry, but clear, precise, mid-paced drums and horror keyboards with rich, full-bodied guitars twisted through digital effects. Mandy sings clean vocals most of the time with the occasional growl or shriek, being the only places the proceedings, it might be said, stumble a bit. The shrill vocals can sound annoying or weak and I suspect this is due to the dryness of the sound – more reverb would have solved that problem.

The 4 lengthy compositions + the intro bludgeon through morbidly inspired material, thrown into odd dissonance with the clean, harmonized vocals, that often stray into sinister whispers and hoarse utterings. I wish the lyrics were available as the titles sounds intriguing: “Alter-Nativity” for instance. Very interesting, although quite primitive - and that’s not at all a bad thing, it just means that there is room to breathe on later recordings. I am looking forward to the forthcoming second demo.

Originally published in Procession of Black Doom Zine Issue 1, 2008

My first impression was that this would be a death or black metal band, judging from their name, logo, cover art and even their song titles. Their genre description however states that they play Doom/Gothic metal and that one of the band members played in Doom metal band Lycanthia, whose album and EP I enjoyed very much. So two good reasons for me to try and get a hold of their debut demo.

The demo starts off with a creepy intro which starts of quite a-tonal and industrial-ish, leading into a passage with church bells and some spoken lines building up to the first real song “Alter-Nativity”.

The first tones immediately make clear that this is far more doom than gothic oriented, if there is a gothic influence all together. This sounds more like pure Doom to me to be honest. The guitar riffs are incredibly slow and pounding and are accompanied by some evil sounding vocals. Most are sung with a clear voice, but there are some growled passages to be found too.

The musicianship of the two band members is great and is supported by a great production.

If you like some depressive well-executed doom metal, this demo is for you.