Windhand - Eternal Return (2018)^{Release ID: 7080}

There's no two ways about it, Windhand are my favourite female-fronted doom metal band. Sure, there are a myriad of others that I enjoy immensely and sometimes I even think someone may rival Dorthia Cottrell and the guys, but then I actually put on a Windhand release and I am once more assured that, indeed, they are the real deal and blow away the opposition.

Eternal Return was the band's fourth full-length and the third with the classic lineup of vocalist Dorthia, guitarist Garrett Morris, drummer Ryan Wolfe and bassist, Cough's Parker Chandler. Windhand had not changed their style noticeably since the self-titled debut six years earlier, but Eternal Return did mark a slight evolution of their sound. The fundamentals of the band's sound are still present, the tight and impressive rhythm section of Chandler's thick, driving basslines coupled with Wolfe's thunderous drum fills and eternal cymbal crashes, Morris's titanic, lumbering and heavily distorted riffs oozing from the speakers and Dorthia's siren vocals, seducing and beckoning the listener from the aether of whichever plane of existence she inhabits. This time round, though, there has been a slight tweak or two. "Grey Garden", despite sounding like business as usual, actually has a grunge-like quality to it as well, particularly in the vocal melodies which comes on like Kurt Cobain at his most vulnerable-sounding. That is followed by "Pilgrim's Rest" which is a psychedelic ballad that sounds like it might have been a cover of a track that originally came out in 1967 (it isn't). Elsewhere, the three-minute interlude "Light into Dark" allows Garrett Morris to display his psychedelic credentials with a space rock-y, trippy instrumental piece and his solo during Red Cloud is another rocket fuel-injected cosmic trip.

But now let's set all that aside because Windhand are at their best when they are at their doomiest and heaviest and there are plenty of these instances on Eternal Return. Whether it's the pomp of opener, "Halcyon", the crawling, heaving thunder of "Eyeshine" and closer, "Feather" or the more uptempo and catchy Diablere, when they hit the doom button, then Windhand absolutely crush it and all the female-fronted pretenders to their crown to boot.