Unholy - The Second Ring of Power (1994)^{Release ID: 8334}

Take Thergothon, and My Dying Bride. Put them together. Now remove anything enjoyable. You have this. PASS!

The story of Unholy is one of a band who are honorary members of the "close but no cigar" award based on the biographic detail of their career available online. Make a record, convince yourselves it will sell millions, it doesn't sell millions and so you blame the record company and look for a bigger deal before splitting up anyway. Then, you get back together a couple of years later, make an album, convince yourselves...(etc, etc).  The Second Ring of Power was their sophomore album from nearly thirty years ago and it is an album that sort of tracks the up and down nature of their careers.

For a start, it is fair to say that I have heard both better and worse death doom in my time.  Unholy certainly knew their influences and were never afraid to get into the agonisingly slow zone when needed.  The thing that resonates from the album after a few listens though is the more atmospheric and near gothic tropes that sporadically appear on the record.  The guest vocal appearance of Merja Salmela is the main driver behind this sense of the gothic element and when coupled with the funeral keys often makes for a decidedly (un)death doom like experience.

I get the sense that Unholy were almost trying too hard to get into the upper echelons of death doom in the 90s with this record.  Whether the gothic element was a conscious effort to sound different (or to sound less Thergothon and more My Dying Bride) I will never know but they lacked the song writing prowess to pull this off in all honesty and so parts of this record sound quite amateurish.  Add to this experience the horrendous album closer Serious Personality Disturbance and Deep Anxiety and this album soon finds itself caught in the lower end of my score range.  Competent guys but punching way above their weight on this one.