Time Signature To the bone...

Genre: black/doom metal

Doom metal and black metal have been fused before, with a number of different outcomes, some examples being Nortt's brand of funeral doom, Opera IX's symphonically oriented "Strix: Maledictaey in Aeturnum", Nachtvorst's sludgy "Silence", and Kraken Duurumvirate's atmospheric and weird "The Astroglyphs of the Ritual of Deluge". The German band Essenz also fuse doom and black metal, putting their own spin on the whole affair.

In terms of their experimenting with doom metal, Essenz manage to reach out very broadly into the universe of doom metal and include a lot of different elements into their style.

While the first track 'Extinguish Shapes: Innermediate' is a slightly psychedelic doom metal track with some hard rock tendencies, the following song 'Sea of Light: Pleroma' starts out with some fierce black metal blasting and even has a slightly punky edge to it, not unlike Darkthrone, before the tempo slows down and a number of old school doom-laden passages. In 'Extricate Spirits: Amor' the German band focus on a 70s rock-informed and slightly psychedelic feel driven by some bopping grooves, but also features some fierce black metal blastbeating as well as some really slow near-funeral doom passages. 'Obsverved by Spectres: Paranoia' takes a more sludgy approach, and 'Observing Spectres: Schizophrenia' as an atmospheric instrumental noise-piece. The best track on the album, for my money, is the 11 minutes long "To the Bone: Mania", which has the intensity of black metal even in the slower and heavier passages.

On the whole, I think that Essenz have made a very interesting release in "Mundus Nomen", showing different ways in which the weird and wonderful world of doom metal can be fused with the equally weird and wonderful world of black metal. Anyone who is a fan of both genres should definitely give this album a listen (although it might be more oriented towards doom metal than black metal at the end of the day).