Indiana’s APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE, on the outside, ticks all the boxes for what should make a great doom band. Decent cover art (if we forget the abysmal Last Sunrise of 2010 – which I can’t), they’ve been at it for well over ten years, so the lineup should be locked and loaded, and and and the band contains two members of the much-revered THE GATES OF SLUMBER…
So, why doesn’t it work? The guitar tone grates from the start, and not in a good way. As a doom worshiper since the mid-late ‘80s, in all its forms, I can take a lot, but this just sounds like Guitar Hero on downers. Once the bass joins in, it’s more of the same aimless plod through the remainder of ‘When The Darkness Comes’, unchanging, not relentless, tiring. ‘The Union’ at least features plaintive solo work, but it’s also here that something clicks. Lars Ulrich called, he wants his drum sound back…or any drum sound at all, for that matter, so submerged is the work of Corey Webb throughout. And may whatever gods he calls to, please let Steve Janiak either step out from behind the mic, or learn to sing in something other than the whiny, passionless moan he’s always fallen back on, nowhere more blatant than in ‘Deeper Than The Oceans’. I can name six doom singers before finishing typing this sentence with more fire, more true emotion bleeding through than what’s on offer here. Did you write the melody lines on the way into the studio, because it sounds like that’s about as much work as was put into them.
‘Beautifully Dark’ starts off well enough, if you forget that pesky “no drums” thing, and actually continues on through it’s 2:51 of instrumental melancholy. It’s what I’d call my pick of Until The Darkness Goes if I could bring myself to have one, while ‘Relive The Day’ returns us to lands of utter fucking banality. And that’s really, sadly, all I have to say about this travesty against many things I hold dear.
Review By: Lord Randall
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE
Until The Darkness Goes
Cruz Del Sur Music
0 / 6