Review by Sonny for Isole - Anesidora (2023)

Swedish doomsters Isole embrace the more epic side of doom metal and consistently produced some killer material throughout the first decade of the new millenium, with albums such as Bliss of Solitude and Silent Ruins sitting near the top of my all-time epic doom metal list. Unfortunately as the '10s came around, the band began to plateau and appeared to be resting on their laurels somewhat, sounding more and more formulaic. Their output throughout that decade was reasonable enough, but lacked the punch and grandeur of their earlier material and marked a noticeable downturn in quality. Now Anesidora marks their first full-length of the "twenties" and a hope (from me anyway) that things have taken an upturn once more.

Well, sadly, it appears that things have not changed markedly at all. The band have made a couple of attempts to change things up a bit - a viking metal-like influence on opening track The Songs of the Whales is something a bit different and on a couple of occasions they go for some harsh, growled vocals, but they aren't very convincing to be honest and just make matters worse. The riffs are fairly anodyne and the vocals sound flat. There are a couple of decent solos, but generally speaking this is a particularly unmemorable collection of tracks. They do incorporate a nice keyboard sound on several tracks and I wonder if the album may have benefitted if they had beefed up that aspect for a more atmospheric affair. I enjoy doom metal best when I can connect with it on an emotional level, which is usually achieved either through a sense of deep melancholy, an overwhelming feeling of massive weight through crushing chords and tectonic riffs or, especially with epic doom, a triumphalist sense of power and glory. Sadly, Anesidora ticks none of these boxes and even though it is plain that as musicians Isole are exemplary, they seem to have lost the ability to craft songs that speak to these elements within us, which once they were well capable of.

This is not a terrible album by any means and is technically fine, it just seems to be lacking any real heart and I have listened to so much doom metal by now that this just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I need a bit more than by-the-numbers doom metal nowadays, but that is all that this is really. I won't be adding this one to my Isole collection I'm afraid and that saddens me because I don't like to bad-mouth bands I have enjoyed in the past.