Monolith of Ephemerality

Debut for this Italian band, who play it deliberately mysterious, with the band members not even identifying themselves beyond initials. This is dense, unfriendly, and extreme-sounding music that mixes the crushing heaviness of Doom with the rawness and aggression of Black Metal. This has a tremendous sound, with a big lower end, thunderous drums, and a raw, abrasive guitar sound. The overall sound pulls you in, but then the songwriting can't sustain it. The faster parts of this are pretty generic sounding and don't stand out, and while the slower passages are much more original, they are needlessly drawn out, so you have to wade through a lot to get to the good parts. This band has the right idea, but obtuse, slow music has to be better written than more conventional song structures; otherwise it just sounds generic but slower. I will be curious to see where this band goes in the future, because they're not there yet.