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ALBEZ DUZ
The Coming Of Mictlan

Iron Bonehead (2014)
Rating: 8/10

The Coming Of Mictlan is the second effort from Berlin doomsters Albez Duz, the debut self-titled opus emerging back in 2009. So, it’s certainly been a while.

This album offers seven prime cuts of darkly ambient metal, which is rich in the gothic stakes and tinged with emotional psychedelia. The album opens with ‘Heaven’s Blind’, a weird soundtrack-type rumble of disjointed, ominous drums and those narrative echoes which drift through the ears like such a haunting voice of doom. We’re then introduced to ‘Fire Wings’, which clocks in at almost eight minutes and begins with a lumbering, brooding guitar riff that builds up in classic, simplistic doom metal fashion.

This is doom metal that relies on cavernous atmospherics that are fused with the aching melodies and those clear, portentous vocals which sweep across the framework like a rolling mist eating up an ashen harbour. ‘Fire Wings’ is a track daubed on occult references and esoteric learning. While the track rarely labours above a plod, there is such a deep, churning atmosphere that one cannot help become engulfed by the misery.

For me, this has more in common with the rainy 80s “goth rock” movement, especially with those slightly warbled vocal moans. The leviathan that is ‘Mictlan’ is an eight-minute slab of mournful, fuzzed up doom metal where the vocals take on a yawning expression to convey their message.

Hints of Type O Negative spring to mind as the tales are woven through thickening fogs of gloom where the drums rise like serpents from black oceans and come crashing down into a pit of throbbing chords. Albez Duz at its most energetic exists as a threatening beast; one of distant vocal growls meandering through dank corridors and truly chilly pathways. While in the past the duo may not have been such an innovative force, with this opus they have somehow taken doom metal to new levels of misery and reflection, but instead of dragging the listener into its woeful clutches this is still a work that maintains high levels of creation. In fact, The Coming Of Mictlan has to be one of the finest doom metal releases I’ve heard in the last 30 years, such is its overflowing levels of terror.

The band has the ability to construct monolithic passages of ancient, creaking doom metal but combine it with some truly disturbing ambience, which bring the likes of ‘Feathered Snake’ and the gargantuan ‘Servants Of Light’ exuding all manner of gothic traits. For sheer balls and innovation though, one cannot look past an extraordinary cover of Tanita Tikaram’s ‘Twist In My Sobriety’, which is downbeat pop transformed wonderfully into metallic gloom.

I can’t recommend this album enough from a band whose style of glum metal should prove that there’s still plenty of misery left in that old well we thought was running dry.

Neil Arnold

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