Reviews list for Ahab - The Call of the Wretched Sea (2006)

This brand of funeral doom (slow and heavy but not necessarily sad). Lives and dies with the atmosphere it creates. 

The Masculine Urge to get a boat and go hunt Moby Dick with the boys. If you've got the disease, this is the cure. 

I'm a dude that left a tripley land locked state to move to the region refered to as the Great Lakes. I have a tattoo of an Octopus that covers my  upper right arm. I am at time of post starting a nautical-themed Blackened Jazz-Metal band. This is very much my wheel house. 

Sonny, at time of post the only other review for this album says this kind of music can't get over with the ADHD crowd. I have the most intense case of ADHD you'll ever see. The deep bass of funeral doom like this is about the only thing that helps me calm down and relax. It's totally on the table, ADHD is sometimes called the disease of contradictions. The more you know.

Onto the Album:
Again, this is all about atmosphere, and somehow this band works together to play the ocean. They use vocals and instruments to make the sounds of nautical animals, one of the songs on this album is from the perspective of Moby Dick himself, and the sounds of waves crashing against the ship. They make the sound of a ship leaving port in the opening track. It's phenomenal stuff, and a true team effort. They can put you on the ship with Ishmael and Ahab even if your stuck at your work desk. What they do is truly impressive. It's like those ocean sounds tapes that were popular a while back but the heavy metal version. It's a good time.

They also have some of the highest quality merch, tons of variety in t-shirt designs and colors, highly detailed LARGE patches. Whatever, you want. They got it, and you should support them. It takes a little while to get to the states, but it's of a better quality than a lot of band merch and I appreciate that attention to detail. Attention to detail... THAT's it. That's why their atmosphere works so well. It's meticulously done-every wave and ripple. Anyways order something from this band. It's all very cool. I went for a shirt with a big metronome on it with a slogan that reads "Campaign for Musical Deceleration". I love it.

Set sail with captain AhAB. You won't regret it.

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.