The Angry Scotsman This is the kind of album I hate to review because it's really not a bad album in the slightest. However, it's not really my cup of tea and I always found it difficult to reconcile my personal opinion and how "good" the album itself actually is. I will give my personal review and let you decide for yourself!

"The Inside Room" is an intriguing album. It is funeral doom, which is just very very slow, doom metal. There are barely any traditional riffs to be found, the album is composed almost entirely of dirges. Heavy, droning chords that go on and on. It's really cool. Only issue is, it can get become a bit tiresome especially over the course of a whole album. I love the slow, heavy, droning thing but there is little variation to be found, (though there is some) and the songs don't even build to a powerful climax. Just keep droning on.

The guitar tone and style is pretty cool though, as the simple drumming pushes the songs forward with funeral pace. The song "Between Times" is shorter at 7 minutes and moves with the quickest pace (which is not very much so at all). I actually can slowly bob my head to that song.

The vocals were a surprise and perhaps the strongest part of this album. I was surprised, and thankful, to hear clean vocals. The crushing, slow music and soaring clean vocals are a nice blend and they are just plain good. Clean, understandable, and slow. They are a great vocal display. Also emotional, which is something I can appreciate in metal.

Maybe not to others, someone I encountered said this was a good album even though it's "emo metal" and all about "whiny relationship bulls**t". I guess, as usual I didn't even hear the lyrics, my ear tends to hear the vocals and tune out the words. I was more struck with the soaring, beautiful vocals than whatever he was saying.

A slow, heavy doom metal album with clean vocals. It's not for everyone and certainly doesn't make for good intent listening. Better for background or more casual listening. After so much repetition without really going anywhere I find it difficult to stay focused. Though I'd say I like the music, so I'm not really sure what to do with this. I'll give it a rating of 3 stars, but recommend you check this album out for yourself and decide!

adg211288 The Inside Room is the debut album from UK doom metal act 40 Watt Sun. The band is a new venture from Patrick Walker (vocals, guitars) and Christian Leitch (drums), both formerly of the now defunct doom metal band Warning. The three-piece line-up is completed by bassist William Spong. The Inside Room is an entirely self-produced affair that was released in 2011, and features five songs of traditional doom metal, with a total running time of about forty-seven minutes, so expect some long tracks.

If slow-paced fuzzy and heavy doom metal is your thing, then I can’t see any reason why The Inside Room wouldn’t meet with approval. The guitars are heavy, with the doom atmosphere created really well with the slow tempo. Patrick Walker’s vocals are clear and easy to follow, and the production suits the sound the band seems to have gone for as well as it possibly could. This is unfortunately where anything really positive about The Inside Room comes to an abrupt end.

Maybe I just don’t like doom metal (at least not enough), but other than the fact this is in no way a terrible release, I don’t actually find a lot to write home about when listening to The Inside Room. The first track, Restless, in particular, is so long and drawn out using the same patterns in the music that it gets boring very fast, especially when it only really picks up when past the eight minute mark in its near eleven minute duration, and by then my attention has wandered off somewhere else entirely, and by that time it’s too late to save the track. The music is certainly in no way offensively bad, but it doesn’t strike as being particular innovative either. There are barely any riffs of note, just chord stabs that are allowed to fade out before another is played, and other than changes of lyrics it’s often like listening to the same song five times over, since there’s very little variation in the style of riffs, or the delivery of the vocals. The songs, in other words, have little to no identity from each other. A few instrumental bits offer some more positive factors to consider, but with such parts few and far between 40 Watt Sun’s debut serves more to send me to sleep than to sit up and pay attention to the music.

As I said earlier, I guess if this brand of doom metal is your thing then The Inside Room will probably sound like a much more worthy effort from 40 Watt Sun to your ears, but unfortunately I just find this one boring and mostly uninspired. Second track Open My Eyes is easily the best of the bunch, with such an improvement in quality to Restless that it was able to bring my attention back pretty quickly, but the release overall is just too repetitive and stale for my taste, and I can’t see it appealing to anyone except major doom metal fans. A ‘fans only’ rating is most appropriate I think. Again, The Inside Room is by no means a bad album. At the very least it’s certainly not something that only inspires me to turn it off in disgust, but if I want a doom metal fix from 2011 I’ll stick with Argus’ latest album Boldly Stride the Doomed, thanks all the same.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scored at 4.2/10)