Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet (1995) Reviews
My initial exploration of the early funeral doom albums is coming to an end with Skepticism's debut album from 1995. This near-hour length experience is possibly my favoured to date and I am writing this review have just done a 90 minute walk through the cold and grey countryside near my house and it was the perfect grim accompaniment to my heavy footfalls. With repeated listens over the last few weeks of this album and the other funeral doom releases in this challenge I have come to finally understand the connection I am so easily able to make with this kind of music that appeals to me so much the more I discover of it.
Stormcrowfleet is a weighty offering. It never tries to present itself as being anything else, right from the off its dismal keys and crushing riffs hide none of its monolithic nature. Those slow and deliberate drums alongside those deep, guttural vocals only add to the tortuous pace of the album. I have already on previous funeral doom releases how important repetition is and of course we have that in abundance here again. The fact is that. end to end, Stormcrowfleet is utterly deathly. It creeps at the pace of the ages of time itself, showing now urgency to end its futile progression. In a world where I (like all of us) have my fair share of burdens and weight to carry on my shoulders, albums such as this are a welcome distraction.
The best visualisation of this is a deep silo, chute or vertical tunnel with a huge weight being slowly pushed down it on vast hydraulics. This weight (in this instance Stormcrowfleet) creates pressure that pushes the weight of my woes and worries up and away as a greater mass that needs to occupy the space they constantly reside in. This dispersal of the day to day banality of life is so welcome that I find albums such as this quite cathartic. There is a moment of such a subtle yet emotionally devastating explosion at about two-and-a-half-minutes into By Silent Wings that it genuinely stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.
Whilst not perfect, the production job here is better than on the debuts by Winter and Thergothon and this gives this album just enough elevation above those two releases to get it top marks out of the three of them. My best find to date on this journey without a doubt and I am looking forwards to more long walks with this as my soundtrack.
Like an epic invasion of ogres captured in audio, Stormcrowfleet is grand and moving funeral doom.
Skepticism, along with Thergothon and Esoteric, are generally acknowledged as the grandfathers of funeral doom metal. For that alone, I have an awful lot to thank them for. Any band that helped bring to life such a grand, beautiful form of music deserves an enormous amount of praise in my books. But while there’s no doubt that all official Skepticism releases can and should be considered funeral doom, the band initially evolved from less revolutionary territory. Formed in 1991, the original line-up is a bit of a mystery, but it is widely known that they started out playing straight forward death metal. A year after their formation, they released a seven-inch vinyl single called Towards My End that went relatively unnoticed. It was only when the official line-up of Matti (vocals), Jani Kekarainen (guitar), Eero Pöyry (keyboards) and Lasse Pelkonen (drums) joined forces in 1993 that their sound began to take on more depressive and doom-oriented leanings. The Aeothe Kaear demo was the first Skepticism release to hint at what they would become and was even referred to as “funeral doom” in some reviews. The recording, which included three tracks that would eventually appear on the debut full length, was impressive enough to gain the interest of US label Red Stream and a deal was made. Stormcrowfleet finally lumbered into existence in 1995.
Considering the infancy of the style, you might expect that these Finns merely took the first steps towards an eventually thriving genre, when in fact Skepticism nailed everything that funeral doom stands for at the first attempt. While it's certainly true that the genre has a lot of, admittedly slight, variations on offer, the spirit, atmosphere and techniques haven't ventured far from what can be found right here on Stormcrowfleet. To try to sell Skepticism in purely musical terms is to commit marketing suicide. The drums are extremely plodding, never really gaining any sort of momentum throughout. The guitars are made up of highly distorted, low tuned, simple chord structures that display no real technical ability whatsoever. Stormcrowfleet is the only Skepticism release to contain a bassist (a session musician from a band called Lihtede), but given the monolithic low end dirge of the riffs, I guess the band figured there was no need from this point on. The vocals are raspy, low, indecipherable growls that seem to come from within the belly of the music and the keyboards at times sound like church organs, while at others like some sort of slow motion, cinematic battle soundtrack. I reckon if you had to listen to any instrument found here separated from its cooperatives for more than a couple of minutes, you'd be bored out of your brain. In union however, they form some sort of ancient magic, surpassing the sum of their parts in a huge way.
In the end, individual instruments become entirely irrelevant once these tracks sink in. It's all about atmosphere and Stormcrowfleet has masses of the stuff. There's something monstrous and epic about it that defies its simplicity and recalls some sort of large-scale war. If Bolt Thrower manages to turn human warfare into audio form, Skepticism depicts an invasion of giant, primordial ogres through hypnotic, emotional doom. The production is murky to say the least, yet that only adds to the outcome, with the strange clarity of the keyboards breaching the heavy distortion of the guitars and guttural vocals. This symphonic focus is what gives Skepticism such a unique presence and the subdued riffs are for the most part merely building up the wall of sound that captures the listeners imagination and refuses to let go. Stormcrowfleet is a wonderful and significant funeral doom metal album, but it can only be recommended to metal fans that like their music seriously gloomy and depressing. If you enjoy the more gothic and stoner styles of doom, there’s no guarantee that you’ll connect with the extremity of Skepticism. You’ll either find yourself rocking in a corner in a trancelike state of rapture or crawling back to your My Dying Bride and Cathedral albums, hoping to wash the muck from your ears. If you want to find out which side of the fence you sit on, the highlights are Sign of a Storm, Pouring and The Gallant Crow.
Early funeral doom has a particular sound and atmosphere. Skepticism was among the founders of that subgenre, and while I appreciate their groundwork, there are now a multitude of bands that have done it better. It's big, forboding, and scarce. Too scarce for me, but still a landmark. Try it out for yourself-listen to the first 5minutes, and decide if you want to keep doing that for an hour.
Ben & I became involved with the debut album from this highly praised Finnish funeral doom metal outfit very early on in their recording career however we've always been quite divided on the merits of "Stormcrowfleet". My younger brother claims it to be an unmitigated classic in every respect while I've never been able to see past a few obvious failings that have prevented it from ever eclipsing the status of a passing interest. This revisit hasn't seen that changing as I still struggle with the poor production & performances. The fuzzy guitars sound like they're in another room from the rest of the band while the ultra-lethargic drumming is regularly out of time which makes the album sound more like a cheap demo than a proper release. The fact that there aren't technically many genuine guitar riffs doesn't help either with most of the melodic themes being presented by some pretty cheap sounding synthesizers.
Despite these obstacles though, there's something mysterious about Skepticism's sound that manages to keep my interest in 2023. It's an ethereal quality that's not dissimilar to those found on lo-fi atmospheric black metal releases & it's this element alone that sees Skepticism offering me enough reward to justify my continued attention. The lengthy tracks that bookend the tracklisting are the best examples, particularly the marvellous closer "The Everdarkgreen" which has surprised me enough to see me now calling it a classic example of the funeral doom metal sound. "Stormcrowfleet" may never come close to reaching any of my top ten lists but I'd suggest that it contains an unusual aura that may appeal to fans of Thergothon, Profetus & Pantheist.