Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Skepticism - Stormcrowfleet (1995)
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.