Skepticism helped invent Funeral Doom along with Thergothon back in the '90s, and their 1995 debut Stormcrowfleet is still a treasured classic of the genre, but since then they have kind of been treading water, releasing albums that stay within the expected sound, but that also just do not have the songwriting chops to carry off their ideas. Albums like Alloy and Farmakon have their fans, but they just have not made nearly the impression the band's early works promised. This is the sixth album in the band's long career, and I find myself liking it a lot better than other recent Skepticism works.
This is Funeral Doom, as so it has to be judged on the atmosphere it conjures and the way it uses musical tension to sustain interest through these long compositions. When these details are not attended to, then this kind of music is just long rather than epic and boring rather than serious, but here it is done well. This is not genre-defining, but it is a worthy album by a band I thought had long outlived their time.
