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OCCULTATION
Silence In The Ancestral House

Invictus Productions (2014)
Rating: 6.5/10

With its genuinely creepy introduction, Silence In The Ancestral House emerges from the shadows and signals the return of New York trio Occultation.

Two years previous, messrs Viveca Butler (vocals / drums), E. Miller (guitar / organ / vocals) and Annu Lilja (bass / vocals) released their murky 2012 debut album Three & Seven which impressed me greatly with its creaking joints and oaken doom metal charade. It’s no surprise then that these guys have continued ploughing similar furrows for Satan. This new opus boasts nine tracks which nod to the Gothic drama of King Diamond and Ghost B.C., but also in the doom-laden sense bands such as Candlemass.

The problem, however, is that a majority of contemporary bands of this ilk who are influenced by the occult seem to lack the one detail that made bands such as Candlemass and King Diamond so good, and that’s weight. I personally think that Ghost B.C. is one of the most overrated bands of the modern era – bolstered only by their ghoulish façade – but the reality is while esoteric rock is very much in vogue, pretty much every artist within the field seems to not only be bereft of weight but originality too. Occultation slips into the same category, because while there are some truly eerie moments on this sophomore effort, it boasts a sound you’ll feel as if you’ve heard so many times before and everything about this is just so tepid.

Once the brief introduction is through, we’re swept away by the foggy nuances of ‘The First Of The Last’ which begins with a promising, doom-laden chug, only to forget itself rather quickly and loiter in that watery Ghost B.C. realm where ghostly atmosphere believes it can take precedence over musical quality, but in this case it just doesn’t work.

In spite of the dreamy female vocal wisps – which sadly seem to litter every bloody occult rock opus nowadays – there is an element of the basic with Occultation, who drifts aimlessly in that clogging sea already inhabited by the likes of the equally lukewarm The Oath and Bloody Hammers, alongside the more innovative of acts such as Purson.

Where do we go from here with this occult rock malarkey? ‘Laughter In The Halls Of Madness’ once again boasts that ghoulish-a-go-go strain where uptempo doom rock meets late 60s garage-psyche nostalgia; a void where spectral moans float over misty graveyards and fiendish riffs speak of loitering menace. There are hunts of New Wave and Goth too, more so in, again, ‘Laughter In The Halls Of Madness’, while the horrified strains of the dramatic ‘All Hallow’s Fire’ now seem commonplace within the extreme metal genre.

I actually like this album for what it is – a brooding slab of simplistic doom metal – but I just feel that there is something missing with this current, popular trend. I can certainly understand why Black Sabbath influences just about everyone within the metal genre, but to hear so many bands – especially those with female vocals – opting for a similar sound is rather worrying, because it doesn’t matter how much I enjoy the spooky echoes of ‘The Dream Tide’, I’m just left feeling so darn unfulfilled that only a night spent in the shadows of a crooked tombstone in the local churchyard will fully appease my hunger.

Neil Arnold

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