Wall of Sleep - When Mountains Roar (2010)Release ID: 22954
When Mountains Roar was Hungarian band Wall of Sleep's fourth album released in 2010 on PsycheDOOMelic Records. I have a passing familiarity with the band, mainly via previous album, 2007's ...And Hell Followed With Him which I enjoyed a fair bit without it exactly setting my world alight. Wall of Sleep play a stonerised version of traditional doom metal that has a very prominent hard rock component to it, in fact I would even suggest that the song Bitter Smile contains a riff that was ripped straight off of Zeppelin's The Ocean from Houses of the Holy, so how much you enjoy this will be very dependent on how comfortable you are with rock grooves on metal albums. For me this isn't much of a problem as I grew up in the classic hard rock heyday when bands like Zeppelin and Deep Purple ruled the roost.
Wall of Sleep are still fundamentally a metal band, be assured, and when they go full-on stoner/trad doom, such as on Receive the Pain, then they prove that they are more than capable of cranking out some terrific doom metal. But these guys are definitely worshippers at the feet of Page, Blackmore et al and in all honesty my favourite aspect of When Mountains Roar is the solos of guitarists Balázs Kemencei and Sándor Füleki who were obviously raised on a diet of Seventies guitar gods and turn in some brilliant six-string showcases. Vocalist Csaba Cselényi had joined the band a year before the release of the album and he has a fine line in gruff, blues-inflected vocals and his voice is perfectly suited to this style of material. The songs themselves are exceedingly melodic with anthemic, sing-along choruses in many cases that had me having to check myself from bursting into song myself as I was out walking the dog! In fact, I would have to say there is more than a little bit of Down about them at times with an inherent bluesiness to a large percentage of their material.
All-in-all I would personally hail this a success as it could successfully fill a niche for when I need to hear some metal that still harks back to earlier, less complicated days when I too was obsessed with the Zeps and Purples of this world. Sadly, I think this would probably get short shrift from the majority of Metal Academy members as it is probably too rock-orientated for most members, which is a big shame because it is very well done indeed.
