The Tome

This CD compiles the complete discography of the Funeral Doom band Hierophant (the band that was a pre-cursor to the fantastic band Catatcombs). As the band only released three admittedly lengthy EPs in their lifespan, a couple of the tracks on offer are repeated in the first few tracks, (albeit with a greater production on the re-recorded efforts). Don't let it put you off though, as this is a great addition to any funeral doom fans collection.

Rumbling and crawling with the same Lovecraftian expansiveness that encapsulated Catacombs' two releases, "The Tome" is an achingly slow, crushing tide of cement grey matter pushing down on you for over an hour of sheer despondency. Whilst the pounding rhythm guitar effervesces and crackles out its oh-so-slow rhythms, another guitar lays down a delicate melody to truly twist the knife with a smile. The sound is rounded out by the bass, which hums and resonates throughout, as well as the sporadic drum hits which pierce the atmosphere with gunshot like cracks, and the fantastic gurgled growls that seep throughout the mix like bubbles in a tar pit. All these things combine effortlessly for a twisted, sludgy brew of epic proportions.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable release throughout (even with the repeated tracks so early on), and a perfect album for fans wanting to hear more high quality funeral doom in the vein of Thergothon and Skepticism.

Originally written for www.metalcrypt.com

I don't think I've ever heard a release where enjoying it felt so... optional. I'm both perfectly capable of enjoying Hierophant fully and dismissing it absolutely depending on whether I want to expend the effort to get in the mood for it or not. It reminds me of Austere's 'Withering Illusions And Desolation' in that regard; I CAN enjoy it fully, but a lot of the time I wonder why I should have to work that hard to enjoy it.

Hierophant has a position of pretty large underground credibility in the funeral doom scene that I honestly think is rather questionable because this project embodies all the worst stereotypes of funeral doom. Very slow, ultra-repetitive tracks composed of almost frustratingly simple distorted power chord versus winding clean guitar melodies with breathy, cavernous growls and ultra-thing drum programming make up the entirety of 'The Tome', and though this material supposedly makes up en eight-year span of the projects career, there's precisely zero musical development to be found across the tracks. The production becomes marginally better as the CD wears on (but is still terrible even by the end due to insanely loud rhythm guitars with sustaining feedback that makes everything else borderline inaudible) but the actual compositions never develop past chun chun grrr. I guess the primary influence here is Thergothon, but Hierophant is much closer to 'normal funeral doom' than that band ever was. If the oldest material here truly is from 1994, then Hierophant is probably one of the bands we can 'credit' with establishing the codified nature of modern funeral doom, which is quite strange considering that this date would have placed it directly parallel to Skepticism and Thergothon.

The instrumental ability here is almost embarrassingly bad; Xathagorra Mlandroth's guitar playing is woefully offtime against the drums through about half of the CD, and you'll regularly here him forcefully snap the strings back in time with the programming with a sustained or abbreviated chord. The songs, overall, are intensely repetitive: single melodic fragments and rhythmic riffs will be held for minutes at a time with little to no variation, and the hour plus running time of the CD makes this almost unbearable to get through. Now, with all this said, if I can get myself in the proper state of mind, this music can be remarkably effective: what little actual content there is is extraordinarily atmospheric, with a decrepit, funereal atmosphere that few match. The tiny melodic lines of the lead guitar contrast vividly with the brute hammering of the rest of the music, entirely ensnaring the listener that's willing to let it happen. When I'm able to lay back and let this take me, there's little out there that's more effective at conveying the pure atmosphere that funeral doom concerns itself with.

However, the moments when I'm able to let that happen are few and far between. The lack of variation in the tracks is staggering; twelve minute songs in and of themselves aren't a problem, but when they're composed of exactly one musical idea, they're hard to sit through. Hierophant does attempt to create some sort of interest in the listener through off-kilter time signatures, a strange melodic sense, and other elements of experimentation, but overall it's hard to use these to stretch out what are already insanely thin ideas. I CAN get in the mood for this, but frankly there's so little going on that I really wonder why I would bother a lot of the time. I can listen to a band like Wormphlegm and get to a similar place with a hundredth of the effort on my part; what's my motivation to listen to an ultra-primitive version of the same style and work so hard when it seems like the musician himself isn't putting that much effort into transporting me to such a place?

'The Tome' is certainly a curious part of the funeral doom scene from one of the odder members of the genre, but it's hard for me to recommend it wholeheartedly. Pure funeral doom fans willing to put in substantial effort to get the admittedly great stuff in this CD out of it might find this worthwhile, but it honestly embraces the established tenants of the style so tightly that it seems like more a vanity project than anything. There's nothing wrong with a vanity project, but it necessarily pushes a lot of people out of the loop, and most of the time, I'm one of those people.

If the dates on my copy of this CD can be believed, the earliest material on The Tome date back a full decade before the time of this writing, and for reasons you may be able to guess at yourself, it is somehow utterly, completely unsurprising to me that Hierophant, the best self-released funeral doom band, significantly predates the recent explosion of projects in the style and all of their mp3s on soundclick.com.

This is actually a compilation of three releases, an untitled (?) EP from 1994, The Weight of Winter from 1996, and Autumn Dusk from 2002. The first EP is really only of historical interest, as its two tracks are repeated with (very very slightly) better production on The Weight of Winter, but nevertheless it’s nice to have everything recorded the Hierophant name conveniently collected together.

The band’s style is descended from the old masters Disembowelment and Thergothon, but copies neither, instead opting for a hypnotic, ultra-minimalist style that contrasts frozen downtuned distorted guitar with simple, eerie clean guitar melodies. The two halves react to one another perfectly, summing together to create a far more haunting atmosphere than either would alone. The vocals really need to be heard to believed – in fact, you still might not be able to believe them even after you’ve heard them. They’re almost inhumanly low and they truly make the music.

As one might expect, the production is awful by most standards, but again, as one might expect, this probably does more to enhance the atmosphere than counteract it. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that we’re going to hear any more out of Hierophant, although the one man behind the band did record some decidedly different (but also excellent) doom as Catacombs. If you enjoy this style of music, seek out this release, as it’s one of the best.