Smoulder - Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring (2019)^{Release ID: 10640}

Smoulder are a five-piece formed in 2013 and centred around married couple, guitarist Shon Vincent and vocalist Sarah Ann. Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring marked the band's debut full-length and followed their well-received three-track demo, The Sword Woman, which supplied two of the six tracks featured here.

Musically the album skirts the border between epic doom and good, old-fashioned heavy metal, tinged with a pinch of USPM. They lean more towards the triumphal heroicism of Solstice's brand of epic doom rather the more mournful laments of, say, Solitude Aeternus with the tempos of most of the tracks edging towards the pacier end of the doom metal arsenal, never really dropping to the ploddingly mournful pacing more common of most doom metal albums. The downtuned guitar and meaty bottom end still sit this within the doom metal sphere, though, with only a couple of tracks, "Bastard Steel" and "Voyage of the Sunchaser", edging into heavy or power metal territory and both of which are riotous, fist-pumping headbangers. The riffs on display throughout are solid and project vitality, power and strength, whether galloping at pace or hulking at a more sedate pace. The riffs are more than capably bolstered by a tight-knit rhythm section of drummer Kevin Hester and bassist Adam Blake, both of whose work is neat and effective. The leadwork of both Shon Vincent and second guitarist Collin Wolf is confidently done, with some fine solos that are expressive and exhilharating without ever leaning towards the self-indulgent.

Inevitably, though, the main focus of attention is going to be vocalist Sarah Ann Kitteridge whose powerful pipes are perfectly suited to the more epic style that Smoulder are going for. Like a female Messiah Marcolin, her voice soars above the instrumentation, demanding the attention of the listener. This is no slight on the rest of the band members, but her voice does project such irresistible power that it is impossible for it not to become the focus and luckily she has the talent to carry off such a central role, never wavering or losing pitch which, unfortunately, I hear all too often nowadays from vocalists operating outside their capabilities.

The songwriting is generally of a high quality and is split between most of the band members, with only Adam Blake not contributing, which allows for some nice variation, yet illustrates the band's unity of vision as the tracklisting is very consistent. Lyrically, they fall back on the well-worn metal trope of sword and sorcery epic fantasy storytelling for the most part, with opener, "Ilian of Garathorm" delving into an old epic metal staple, Michael Moorcock's world of Elric and The Eternal Champion.

Overall this is a well-executed slab of triumphalistic metal that reaches back to the earlier days of the genre, yet is still refreshingly exciting and vital and should appeal to anyone who still loves the power and glory of epic metal storytelling.