February 2022 Feature Release – The Fallen Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The Fallen has been nominated by Sonny. It's the highly regarded 2006 "The Call of the Wretched Sea" debut album German funeral doom metal outfit Ahab. It's been many years since I've revisited this high quality release & I'm quite excited to see how my feelings have developed. Get your wellingtons on & let's head off to the wildest depths of the deep blue sea for the darkest & most crushing marine excursion imaginable.

https://metal.academy/releases/6530

The album art for The Call Of The Wretched Sea is very similar to that of Mastodon's Leviathan from only two years prior. That must have put quite a bit of pressure on Ahab to put together a special album. And the result is a tale that is incredibly dense, brooding and hopeless. What Ahab are able to accomplish here is textured, but not isolated enough to ignore the basic fundamentals of what makes a song memorable. There are some very simple melodies that exist on this record throughout it's six "songs", and while they may not develop themselves, the ensemble around them is robust and can turn tracks into something completely different; whether that be through key changes, tempo shifts, unique synth countermelodies, or lyrics. Where Ahab gets it right is the fundamentals; the bass and drums are pummeling even though they technically are quite simplistic.

Unfortunately, the vocals are quite weak overall. I understand conceptually that the vocals are stylistically pushed back in the mix behind much of the instrumentals because it is supposed to evoke a feeling of hopelessness, like being drowned. But track like "The Pacific" are told from the third person and has no real connection to the tale, other than a tribute to the mighty waters. There is no reason that I can tell, why the spoken word samples that sporadically appear throughout the record are more audible than Daniel Droste's vocals. Ahab would eventually solve this problem on later records, but here it just sounds like a miscalculation.

A few months ago when another Funeral Doom album was featured (Monolithe II to be precise), I lambasted the album for taking the piss out of the doom genre and leaving it an empty shell of texture rather than anything remotely interesting or memorable. I questioned whether or not I was being too hard on that record and Funeral Doom as a subgenre. But then I remembered what Ahab has been able to accomplish without ever having to resort to twenty-plus minute epic's that have no idea what they want to do. Mastodon is a good comparison point, because both tell the same story very well, but from two very different perspectives. These waves are worth the long and treacherous sail.

8/10

P.S. I prefer The Boats of the Glen Carrig slightly more than this, mostly due to the vocals not being the best. I understand why they are this way and I appreciate the effort, but they don't help the atmosphere in the same way.

It's been more than a decade since I first witnessed "Call Of The Wretched Sea" but I've returned to it several times & it never fails to capture me with its deep, nautical atmosphere. The super gutteral vocals are a real highlight & there's a consistent quality to the entire tracklisting but the album sneaks up on you as it progresses as it doesn't peak until the final two tracks which are nothing short of extraordinary. I love the short dark ambient interlude "Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales" that sits in the middle of the record too as it's beautifully executed & breaks the tracklisting on nicely. As Saxy implied earlier, Ahab's brand of crushingly slow extreme metal is perhaps a little too simply structured to compete with Esoteric at the very top of the funeral doom mountain however it stands tall with the best of the rest & I come out of it feeling empowered by its miserable majesty.

4.5/5

I always forget that I have a penchant for funeral doom every now and again.  I really do have to be in the mood for it though and when I discovered Bell Witch one week when I was working away and living in a hotel it really struck a chord with me, hence it seems to be a genre that only really appeals in a certain mindset or scenario.  I have heard this release before but it was some years ago and was also just a singular listen so my first re-spin this week still feels like I am coming to this new.  May even stretch myself to a rare Fallen review later this month after a few more listens.

When people talk of atmospheric metal releases they usually point to atmospheric sludge or atmo-black albums and it is true, these can both conjure up marvellous atmospheres. I particularly enjoy the natural world atmospherics of atmospheric black metal, be it the icy coldness of bands like Paysage d'Hiver and ColdWorld, the sweeping highland majesty of Saor or the awe-inspiring cosmic metal of Darkspace or Mare Cognitum. However, nothing expresses the atmosphere of the most fundamental forces of the natural world, such as heaving tidal forces, than funeral doom. At it's best it is overwhelming and implacable, either smothering or sweeping away all that stands before it in the same way that lava flows or tidal waves are capable of doing. German four-piece Ahab and their debut album The Call of the Wretched Sea, based on the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville from whence they get their name, is one of the great albums for summoning up the sensation of being out on the deep ocean and it's immense tidal forces, along with the interaction of Ahab with it's most huge and implacable denizen, the white whale Moby Dick himself. As we all know, Mastodon released their classic Leviathan album two years prior, but the fact that they both draw on the same source material is the only real connection and I don't think Leviathan had any influence on Call of the Wretched Sea at all. The Mastodon album is a straight-up narrative of storytelling whereas Ahab's aims for a more immersive and overwhelmingly tactile experience.

Funeral doom metal is not really for the impatient and will most likely always be a niche genre, particularly with the modern world's obsession with instant gratification and ADHD-like impatience in it's junkie-like hunt for that next dopamine hit. However, for those willing to invest the time and to surrender themselves to it's all-pervasive heaviness, funeral doom is ultimately one of the most rewarding of metal genres. Call of the Wretched Sea is one of the greatest examples of why and is one of the absolute peaks of funeral doom metal in my opinion. There is a genuine sensation while listening to this that forces way beyond our ken or ability to control are at large and that ultimately men are at the whim of these vast, unknowable forces. Whilst listening to this and indeed any truly great funeral doom, I feel like it registers on a physical level and can almost feel it's ebbing and flowing within my own bloodflow, such is the power of this music for me.

Despite being over an hour in length Call of the Wretched Sea never gets dull or overly repetitive as there is more than enough going on to keep things interesting, but it is never hurried and the tracks are allowed the time to develop in a natural and organic way. Funeral doom gets a reputation for being monolithic and eschewing riffs for huge chords, which can certainly be true, but here there are definitely some great riffs, albeit they are exceedingly slow, smothering, and crushingly heavy - check out the riff to The Sermon, it is basically an ultra-slow, mega-heavy sea shanty. Keyboards are used fairly subtly, but they add an extra layer to the already thick atmosphere that increases the cloying nature of the music and adds to the sensation of being dragged down to a watery grave in the lonely isolation of the vast and unforgiving ocean. Daniel Droste's subsonic growl further adds weight and sounds like some Cthulhian elder crooning into a drowning man's ear to just let go and surrender to the ocean's lure.

This is not just one of my favourite funeral doom albums, but one of my favourites of any genre, metal or otherwise and stands as testament to sheer unadulterated heaviness and almost palpable atmospherics.

5/5 classic status.