UMUR
Visions of the Haunted is the debut full-length studio album by UK doom metal act Crowned in Earth. The album was released in May 2010 by Shadow Kingdom Records. The album is rather short for a doom metal release, being only 35:14 minutes long, but of course a 35:14 minutes long release still fully qualifies to be called a full-length album. Crowned in Earth is a two-man act consisting of Kevin Lawry on vocals, guitars, bass and organ and Darin McCloskey on drums.
The music on the 5 tracks on the album is traditional doom metal greatly influenced by the classic 70s/ 80s acts in the genre ( Witchfinder General, Pentagram, Saint Vitus and of course Black Sabbath). We´re talking a very traditional sounding doom metal album here and you´ll have to look long for innovation. That´s not a problem if the music kicked ass, but unfortunately that´s not exactly the case here. The instrumental side of the music varies between doomy parts and some more uptempo mid-paced sections. In addition to guitars, bass and drums, there´re occassional organ lines which gives the music an epic touch. The music is rather dull though and lacks power and conviction. The songs aren´t especially memorable either. There´s nothing really bad here either though, the material just comes off mediocre. The vocal delivery by Kevin Lawry unfortunately doesn´t help on that impression. He sounds like he couldn´t bother less and he has a rather unremarkable voice to boot. To top it off the production isn´t very good either. The instruments sound detached from each other in the mix.
So all in all this is a very mediocre traditional doom metal album. I´ve heard plenty of albums in this genre that sounds more interesting and professional and I´m having a hard time jystifying why I should put on Visions of the Haunted instead of one of them. A 2.5 star rating is warranted.