Apostle of Solitude - Sincerest Misery (2008)^{Release ID: 16217}

Sincerest Misery is the debut full-length album from this Indianapolis four-piece who were formed by and are centred around guitarist and vocalist Chuck Brown, ex-drummer with Gates of Slumber. They play a conservative and orthodox version of traditional doom metal, tracing a direct line back to early practitioners like Pentagram and Pagan Altar. This is mainly all about crunchy-sounding doom metal riffs and dolorous, melancholy atmosphere with little room for fancy embellishment or out-of-genre experimentation. The album contains nine tracks, including an unsurprising, closing cover of Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" and has a total runtime topping seventy minutes which, to be honest, is bulked out with a couple of filler tracks in addition to the unnecessary cover.

As far as their version of traditional doom metal goes, AoS are unfussy and effective. The rhythm section is functional and you will hear very little by way of fancy drum fills or complicated basslines. In fact, the bass is very subdued in the mix and the production as a whole is quite lightweight and could do with some serious boosting of the bottom end. The production does allow for good clarity and a sharpness to the guitar sound in particular, which enhances the "crunch" of the distorted riffs. Chuck Brown's vocals are quite reedy and thin-sounding and I could understand why some may not particularly like them, but personally I think they work well here because they sound world-weary and downbeat which suits the mood of the instrumentation well. The soloing is the only area in which Apostle of Solitude allow themselves any real indulgence, with some soaring lead work that occasionally tips over into psych / stoner territory.

As I stated earlier, I think the album is too long and, especially with this being the band's debut, I believe that if they had concentrated on their core sound rather than including the very average instrumental "The Dark Tower" and the tedious noodling of the eight-minute-plus "This Dustbowl Earth", whilst also skipping the Sabbath cover, then they would have had a heavier and more concise representation of their orthodox doom metal vision, making it much more likely to cause a splash in the trad doom world than it did. Make no mistake, tracks like "A Slow Suicide", "Warbird" and the fourteen-minute title track especially are like food and drink to hardcore doom metal fanatics and are top-quality expressions of the art, but the album as a whole feels like it waters down their effect, exacerbated by the paucity of bottom end in the production. Shame really, because there is a truly great trad doom album in here waiting to get out.