The Divinity of Oceans

Divinity Of Oceans is Ahab's second full length release and is based on the exploits of Captain Pollard and his crew of the whaling ship The Essex. The ship is damaged by a storm after four days from leaving her home port at Nantucket Island. Further tragedy strikes later on in the form of a large (26m by accounts) sperm whale that rams the fateful ship twice quickly sinking her, leaving the survivors to save a few meager provisions and dividing them into three remaining life boats commanded by Captain Pollard, Mathew Joy, and Owen Chase. I won`t go into too much detail as to what happened to the crew or of their arduous journey. Readers can look up what became of them, and the harrowing tale lasts many months for the few who survived. It is Owen Chase's book,"Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex", published in 1821, that inspired Herman Melville to write the classic story, Moby Dick, which in turn inspired Ahab to write their debut album, The Call Of The Wretched Sea.

The artwork is a painting by Theodore Gericault called "Le Radeau De La Meduse" - the raft of the Medusa. What could be more fitting and conjure such strong imaginings of utter hopelessness? Divinity is just as dirge-like as the debut album with Ahab playing their trademark claustrophobic sound, but here they have made the overall feel slightly softer, more melodic, and more accessible to a wider audience. In some parts, like "Nickerson's Theme", I find it even quite bluesy in places. The death metal vocals sound particularly lifeless as if they're resigned to the horrors of being adrift on the vast oceans. These drawn out growly death metal cries and protestations are interspersed with clean male vocals that sound like they wouldn't be out of place in a choir. Listening, I feel as if I too have been abandoned by any mariner's superstitious guiding force and am truly alone - bereft, any faith in the divine slowly evaporating at the sheer hopelessness of the situation, a living sun-parched death awaits the men who slowly dehydrate surrounded by so much water. How the starving men of The Essex must have felt as they valiantly navigated with their limited gear for distant Islands I truly do not wish to contemplate. The melody woven around the passionate guitar riffing at around the ten minute mark of the opening track really piques my heart and I long to hear of salvation in the form of a distant ship or hint of land, but alas none are forthcoming. The drumming throughout is often staccato and urgent-sounding yet also profoundly measured and even militaristic at times and together witha great use of the cymbals invoke images of an occasional oar or some other object striking and lifting from the water's surface. The music often builds up to a crescendo only to fall away again into reflectively quieter keyboard passages. It isn't hard to imagine the limitless rising waves and deep troughs of the ocean.This album is colossal in scope and almost identical in length to the debut at a shade over sixty seven minutes.

Over an hour of crushing funeral doom which during repeated listens for reviewing purposes, I truly believed to be around forty five minutes, such is the spell it weaves, sucking the listener in on its sonic funeral procession, truly a "tombstone carousal". O Father Sea (the third track) and the crew's sanity must be pushed to breaking. I feel they have been separated from The Essex for many months. The vocals are a mix of heavy deep growls and those choir-like melodic vocals. A passage in the lyrics sums up the mood at the one minute thirty mark: I feel the iron surges,break inside my head.I feel the boiling maelstroms, tear my mind to shreds. Their world must feel as if it's been turned upside down as keyboards add an eery quizzical depth which can clearly be heard amongst the pattering drums and mournful riffing. Dreamlike? No more hallucinatory and "ghost" like.Nickerson's Theme, the closing track, and a sad voice is lamenting a song for the damned as the singer wishes for happier times: First Nantucket sleigh ride, see! Will be a kingly gift to me. O! That is where I long to be, deep in the heart of the sea.

Brave Thomas Nickerson, a fourteen year old cabin boy who in real life was urged to write down his account which was lost briefly, only being finally put into print a century after his passing. One of the lucky ones who lived to reach old age (seventy eight).

As the final song closes I feel like I can breath properly again, having been both awed and humbled not just by Captain Pollard's tale, but Ahab's ability to project me as a listener to a small lifeboat far from land, tossed relentlessly on a capricious apathetic sea.

Ahab’s first album, The Call of the Wretched Sea, was heavy and downright spooky in ways that made me forget that I was in the real world. Instead, I felt that I was adrift at sea, saturated with saltwater and attempting to fight off giant sperm whales with a spear as I sank ever deeper into the briny abyss. The Divinity of Oceans, however, just struck me as good music.

I was pleased with this album’s composition, and almost all the tracks are catchy and attention-grabbing in a way that funeral doom rarely is. However, those who expected a mere continuation of the style presented in The Call of the Wretched Sea may be somewhat disappointed with this album, as Ahab departs from many of the formulas that they used in their first full-length.

Most importantly, The Divinity of Oceans sounds cleaner than its predecessor. Clean vocals were used far more frequently, the production sounds less ‘muddy’, and the guitars are distorted far less at times. This is apparent as early as the first track. The clean, layered vocals are used almost as much as the guttural, harsh vocals that bring to mind water going down a drain. The music is still slow and crushing as all hell, but Ahab somehow manages to make it much more accessible and calm. None of these changes are BAD things in any way, but the band seems to be inching ever further away from the archetypical funeral doom metal formula and towards something entirely different and unknown.

Surprisingly, many riffs that Ahab uses here (such as the opening riff of the title track) have a very traditional style, in the vein of old-school doom metal bands like Candlemass. These riffs provide an interesting contrast to the otherwise alien style that funeral doom metal fans are used to.

All in all, this album is wonderfully original and well-composed. Doomsters out there that liked Ahab's first album should get a hold of it, and delight in all of its whale-like splendor.

I first discovered Ahab about two years ago on the band’s The Call of the Wretched Sea debut and was pretty impressed. While I’m not overly sold on the guttural-sounding vocals, I am overly-impressed with doom and “stoner” rock as it’s affectionately known in some circles. Plus, a band that’s seemingly obsessed with oceanic themes and sea tragedies is interesting as well (Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains one of the more haunting songs I’ve heard). So upon diving into Ahab’s latest release I’m once more treated to a band bent on tragedy-by-water epics and they didn’t disappoint.

The down-tempo sludge that is this trip into the real-life sperm-whale attack on a ship called the Whale-Ship Essex, which eventually sunk. This left the crew to rely on cannibalism to survive, hence leading Moby Dick writer Herman Melville great inspiration for his classic novel. The opening track, Yet Another Raft of the Medusa (Pollard’s Weakness), reads like a modern day Edmund Fitzgerald in its sheer poetry of lyric and tune. While not nearly as folk-sounding as its predecessor, it’s hauntingly beautiful build-up to the album is rife with originality and introspection. A solid meshing of prog and doom metal, the album is one-hour-plus of heavy riffs, somber instrumental passages and low vocal prowess that severs any and all lines of banality and mediocrity. The album is a musical trip to sea in many regards and it works rather nicely.

The idea of the concept album has been around since David Bowie went to out space and Alice Cooper started having nightmares, but to fashion such a relevant lengthy idea in the current age is not an easy feat. The target audiences have changed and the casual attention span has lost some of its potency with a myriad of peripheral distractions, but Ahab captures a fine piece of aquatic interpretation. The shortest song clocks in at just over seven-minutes, and aside from Opeth very few bands have been able to create such opuses and have them remain vital and interesting throughout the duration. Ahab understands the need for mood music, so to speak, and just when you feel that the seas have become too chaotic for man, the waters slow to a serenity that the music both creates and employs perfectly. If you’ve a vivid imagination this album is for you.

The music actually flows like a novella if followed and ingested evenly. It was a welcome change from the norm of everyday metal music with the heaviness of Black Sabbath finding a home in the watery graveyards of Ahab’s The Divinity of Oceans.

This album is a good journey all around.

(Originally written for http://www.metalpsalter.com)

While you may not be aware of it Ahab's debut Call of the Wretched Sea has a fairly large number of detractors who despise it for its calmness and accessibility. I'm not one of those. In fact I would, like a terrible German film director, challenge any of those detractors to a boxing match to stand up for their catchy, melodic and not particularly depressive sound. Funeral doom is a genre which could do with a little variation, and Ahab's more mainstream accessible approach was one of the more enjoyable attempts at mixing things up a bit, without losing that funeral doom familiarity we all know and love.

The Divinity of Oceans more or less continues with this idea, but it's really gone too far, now to the point of almost being unrecognisable. It's even softer, it has even more clean vocals, and it's not even heavy when it stops plucking all the dainty little melodies and tries to act tough. Call of the Wretched Sea was a deceptively heavy album, sure it was melodic, with lots of calmer moments, but when Ahab wanted to go, they went hard, and could crush just as hard as anyone. This is no longer true; there are no malevolent whales, raging storms, or giant waves in this oceanic wasteland. Sure, there is in the lyrics, but not in the music. All that aquatic murkiness is still here, but The Divinity of Oceans conjures imagery of a lonely raft floating out in calm waters, without the presence of even a seagull, let alone giant murderous whales. This is perfectly fine funeral doom image no doubt, starving slowly to death in the sun in the middle of the Indian ocean is bleak as fuck, but it's also a pretty dull way to go, especially when compared to being crushed by a 40 tonne whale in the midst of enormous storm.

Despite the bleak imagery the album creates, it fails to transfer over to the mood; everything is simply too pretty to really sadden the listener. Excessive clean vocals, beautiful and intricate lead work at times, it all sounds kind of... sweet. It's almost like the lonely rafter is getting some real enjoyment out of looking at his stunning surrounds. Pieces such as 4:55 into Tombstone carousel in fact remind me of a magical underwater world; a Zora kingdom from the Zelda games. There isn't that sense of ominous doom created from these soft sections, they're just nice. The debut painted a picture of ominous death. The Divinity of Oceans just feels like patiently waiting for it.

The heavier parts of the album a certainly more in line with the traditional bounds of funeral doom, things don't get so speedy and mid paced. This in itself isn't a problem, I love my slow riffs, but they usually don't pack much punch. They're just louder than the soft parts, but retain the same melodic styling as the softer sections. Indeed, it's this over-reliance on the soothing and calm melodies that keep this from really being interesting. Clean vocals probably match if not outweigh the growls in terms of frequency, not to mention they are no longer epic and thunderous, but restrained and soothing. The drums have lost their rather thrilling edge, and sweet guitar leads/solos float through many of the songs. Much of it is quite listenable, especially those solos, but there's just too much of everything, it lacks power and purpose. The album just seems to drift from mellow harmony to mellow harmony.

Of course there was a press release prior to the album coming out that they wanted something that would be accessible to both the usual Funeral Doom crowd and those who do not like the genre. So in a way, the band was writing to find a certain audience, which may be what has lead to this dumbing down of their style. It's just too mellow to really grab attention anymore. In their quest to create something accessible, they've lost the momentum that drove the album. In fact, Call of the Wretched Sea is a far more accessible album BECAUSE it has momentum. The most poppy aspect of the band was the fact it felt as if it moved fast, unlike the usual funeral doom album. This is stagnant, and for all its prettiness, it isn’t as likeable. It lacks the heaviness for good plodding doom, and it lacks the smooth flow to function as a harmonious mellow album.

On the good side of things, there are some very good sections about, they just don't build from one to another as well. The start of the title track is brilliant, with an excellent mix of heavy riffs, melodies and vocals. The last minute and a half of "O Father Sea" is nearly as heavy as the big riff in The Hunt. And almost all of the intricate leads/solos are fantastically beautiful pieces, and fit the new style very well. In fact they probably simply wouldn't work on the last album. And finally the production is excellent again, sadly there aren't any of those really aquatic sounding keys they had on the previous album, but overall this album sounds excellent with a loose, roomy mix. And of course, the album creates a very clear image, which shows the band is still made up of excellent evocative musicians, but they've been making the wrong images.

But the good moments as a whole are pretty sparse, and simply aren't worth waiting around for. The Divinity of Oceans is probably the biggest disappointment of the year. Bring back the whales, the storms and most importantly, the ominous brooding.

The Divinity Of Oceans is the second album from German ‘Nautik Funeral Doom Metal’ band Ahab, following their acclaimed and award-winning debut album The Call Of The Wretched Sea, released in 2006. The Call Of The Wretched Sea was a concept album based on Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, and The Divinity Of Oceans follows in its wake, being based on two much less well-known works about whaling. The first mate of the ill-fated Essex, which was sunk in 1820, Owen Chase, wrote a book, Narrative Of The Most Extraordinary And Distressing Shipwreck Of The Whale-Ship Essex, which provided direct inspiration to Melville in his writing of Moby Dick. And Thomas Nickerson, the cabin boy of the Essex, wrote his own book, The Loss Of The Ship "Essex" Sunk By A Whale And The Ordeal Of The Crew In Open Boats, which remained unpublished until 1984. The album’s cover art is taken from Théodore Géricault’s famous painting of 1819, The Raft Of The Medusa.

Some may think that recording not one but two albums about whaling is a bit of a stretch, but of course Mastodon already showed the way with their 2004 album Leviathan, and when you think about it, whaling does seem like a natural theme for metal, involving as it does huge, scary animals, men pitted against the elements, violence, death, dirty great harpoons and so on. I do wonder about the sustainability of Ahab’s fishing quota, though - the traditionally difficult third album syndrome is enough of a challenge without making it the third album based on 19th-century source texts about whaling. Oh well, at least it makes a refreshing change from listening to the umpteenth album about Vikings…

The Divinity Of Oceans contains seven tracks weighing in at an appropriately expansive 67 minutes of playing time. The first track, ‘Yet Another Raft Of The Medusa (Pollard's Weakness)’, opens with gentle, melodic strummed guitar before slamming into a slow, vast riff after a couple of minutes. Several interesting features of Ahab’s sound are immediately obvious, not least the fact that they are supremely capable of elegantly moderating the epic properties of their music with a fine grasp of melody. Whilst the remorselessly trudging beat and awesomely deep, guttural, groaning vocals leave the listener in no doubt that this is extreme doom, the clear production, arpeggiated tremolo guitar flourishes and haunting passages of clean sung vocals from vocalist / guitarist Daniel Droste elevate the song above and beyond orthodox funeral doom.

On the one hand, the crawlingly slow pace and nagging, taunting high guitar leads recall Catacombs and their 2006 Lovecraftian opus In The Depths Of R’lyeh - which is one of my all-time favourite doom albums, so this is no bad thing to be reminded of. But on the other, non-doom comparisons keep suggesting themselves. Daniel Droste’s soaring, aspirational clean vocals are like Opeth or latter-day Borknagar, whilst something about the literary narrative grounding of the album’s concept, as well as the more energetic, chugging pace of tracks like ‘Tombstone Carousel’ brings to mind the gothic horror metal of The Vision Bleak. This latter track is especially interesting, juxtaposing as it does rapid, pattering double bass drum runs with implacable, crushing doom riffs and meltingly lovely melodic interludes - Ahab’s versatility and subtlety really shine through on this song.

The album’s title track is another multi-faceted highlight, but really, the whole album maintains an impressively high standard, with the oppressive horror and morbidity of funeral doom blended throughout with expressively melancholic guitar work to produce a work of great power and atmosphere. Doom metal, like black metal, is a genre overrun with formulaic monkey-hear-monkey-do bands churning out forgettable identikit music, but with The Divinity Of Oceans, Ahab ascend triumphantly above the morass of mediocrity, bringing fresh energy and ideas to the doom genre with an album that will surely be garlanded with praise and awards to an even greater extent than its predecessor. This is easily one of the outstanding doom releases of 2009.

This review was originally written for Judas Kiss webzine:
www.judaskissmagazine.co.uk

With what has undoubtedly been the most eagerly anticipated funeral doom album ever in Rockfreaks.net history, German funeral doomsters Ahab return with their sophomore album "The Divinity Of Oceans". In the event that you've forgotten or just never knew, this anticipation was caused by the general delight towards their debut album "The Call Of The Wretched Sea", an album which had PP known anything about doom at all would've got a greater mark than his 7 those three years ago. Thankfully I love all things doomed and disgusting and that debut album sits near the top of the funeral doom tree, alongside classic cult bands like Thergothon, Skepticism, Asunder and Funeral.

In a sub-genre that is so underground it makes black metal look popular, the template of funeral doom has managed to remain largely malleable over the years since Thergothon and Funeral slowed down death metal to a point of almost complete standstill. This is important because Ahab have fostered their reputation through building on the genre's blueprints over these two albums - largely deep guttural vocals, morose pondering drums, bass heavy guitars and a lead guitar playing eloquent tomes of misery and despondency - as well as adding a special magic all of their own. Compared to almost every other sub-genre, funeral doom is not actually full-to-bursting with bands; however the bulk making up their number represent competency in being miserable whilst cheerfully lacking in any spiritual identity.

Ahab's affection towards the oceans helps provide their unique element. From the fantastic album covers to have adorned both LPs the scale set is truly titanic and this permeates throughout every moment of the music. The production is vast and with beats taking longer to emerge than it will do for you to say 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' these time spaces reveal a cavernous void through which the feeling of being lost at sea emerges. The over-riding sound is of a crushingly heavy band who, in songs like "Yet Another Raft Of The Medusa (Pollard's Weakness)", have the ability to change tone and key like true artists as if the pleasant sea journey is abruptly ended by an atrocious storm. Yet when Ahab chose to, for instance in "O Father Sea" and "Redemption Lost", their cleaner doom moments flirt with a sound of Solitude Aeturnus (especially in the clean vocals of Daniel Droste) and acoustic Opeth that are the key to separating this band from the pack of funeral doom also-rans.

As is often the case in the genre of doom as a whole, bands who specialise in long songs fill much of this time through cyclical, slowing evolving riffs which at times may feel as if time is standing still. Ahab avoid this trap through always keeping the song moving forward, albeit at the speed of a rain-sodden funeral procession, and displaying a colourful palette of tones and riffs that ensure one minute is always different from those either side of it.

As has been proven by PP's affection towards Ahab's debut album in the last few years, they would probably register as the only band with half a chance of entertaining those not yet fully immersed in the world of doom metal. Given they are on a fairly major label too suggests that there is something about this band that really deserves you giving them a full spin or two. Perhaps not quite as doom-ridden as "The Call Of The Wretched Sea", "The Divinity Of Oceans" is still a superb album in it's own right and cements Ahab's position at the top table of the bleakest of tables - that of funeral doom metal.

Originally written for Rockfreaks.net

Although funeral doom does not belong to my favorite genres, I already have come to like Ahab with their 2005 demo „The Oath”. I have missed the then coming debut album, and four years later this is the first one I can put my hands on. Members of Ahab may be familiar from Midnattsol and the – if only step by step – progressing band Mystic Circle.

The music has not changed a lot; we could say it has become slightly more sophisticated. It is by the way worth noting that the analogies with Carcass, Morbid Angel and Devin Townsend mentioned by the promo sheet are utterly groundless and unintelligible. Beside the deep grunting vocals, nothing binds them to death metal, not mentioning Devin-style psychotic music.

In accordance with the requirements of the genre, seven songs can be found on the disc in sixty-eight minutes. The sound is quite gloomy throughout but by no means in a strained manner; you cannot find here the meant-for-the-effect suffering usual in this style. Nor is the production unnecessarily impoverished; the stuff sounds deep, the guitars are tuned down just until the edge of enjoyability, and the sad growls coming from six feet under are also convincing. I regard it a very good idea that they use much more acoustic guitars than usual in the genre. This makes the music somewhat more easily digestible and varied at the same time, without giving up on the dark atmosphere.

The lyrics also merit emphasizing. Leaving the idealess funeral doom clichés behind, all the lyrics are in some way about the ocean – they even dub their own music Nautik Funeral Doom Metal. Unfortunately the booklet doesn't contain the lyrics, but the conception in itself is interesting. And the music fits hand in glove with it; these languid but clear-sounding tracks do remind me of the endless ocean.

This is a nice, ambitious, mature and by all means quality album; I can only recommend it even for those who are otherwise not fond of this genre.

Back in 2006, Ahab took the funeral doom scene by surprise with one of the heaviest (without getting even close to drone) musical attacks of this decade, and now they're back, three years after the slow-motion atomic bomb that was The Call of the Wretched Sea, with a brand new work, called The Divinity Of Oceans. This effort, while pretty much just as heavy as it's predecessor, it delivers deep and crushing music with a more refined sound, I'd even say more elegant.

We find new elements here, not heard of in the band's debut, like nicely performed and arranged chants, multiple clear vocals which fit the mood in ways that are hard to pull off in this metal genre, we also find elements we could call solos if only they weren't so god damned slow (and I mean that as a very, very good thing). They're basically highly harmonic bridges which serve the purpose to keep every "part" of each lengthy song well tied together, and oh man do they succeed.

Drumming is as minimalistic as always, but from time to time, a tomroll will take the listener by surprise. The actual sound is a little bit more dry, which, while reducing the deep feeling the drums had in the previous album, definitely give the music a harsher, more alive feel. Apart from the aforementioned clean chants, guttural vocals are performed superbly and are mixed very soberly in the final mix.

On that note, the guitars are a little less distorted and we get clean guitars from time to time and even psychedelic, pedal-induced moments reminiscent of sea-sickness in music form, which seems to indicate that the band may eventually evolve, away from the sheer distortion-ridden funeral doom, in favour of a more avant-garde, ambient sound (still maintaining the dreadful speed of funeral doom of course). This idea, along with the fact that the album presents much more variation, such as more changes in tempo (only slightly, though, there's nothing even close to speed to be found here), chugging riffs and less minimalistic structures lead me to feel the band has matured considerably since their debut album and may grow to be even more intricate. But then again these are just speculations from my anxious, avant-garde-addicted brain.

All in all things are looking great for this nautik funeral doom band, and this album is a huge step up from their previous effort. Highly recommended.