UMUR "With the Dead" is the self-titled debut full-length studio album by UK doom metal act With the Dead. The album was released through Rise Above Records in October 2015. The lineup consists of three rather prolific doom metal musicians in lead vocalist Lee Dorian (Cathedral, Napalm Death), and the original rhythm section of Electric Wizard, drummer Mark Greening and bassist/guitarist Tim Bagshaw.

Stylistically the music on the album sounds exactly how you´d expect it to sound with the musicians involved. Cathedral meets Electric Wizard isn´t the worst description of the music. It´s the dark and most doom laden Cathedral though (so don´t expect any silly yeahs and oohs here) and the extremely bass heavy and vintage influenced Electric Wizard elements combined. The bass literally threatens to blast your eardrums or maybe cause your chest to implode, that´s how delightfully heavy this is. The dark and gloomy atmosphere is a real treat too, and the lyrics follow suit, which song titles like "Living with the Dead" and "Screams from My Own Grave", are a testament to.

The musicianship is tight yet organic, and it´s obvious that the three guys playing/singing are seasoned veterans of the scene. Lee Dorian still can´t hit a clean note if it came up an hit him in the ass, but regardless of that there is an irresistable charm to his voice and delivery. And wisely enough he limits his use of range here to a minimum. His performance has the right dark, occult, and "evil" sound, which suits the instrumental part of the music well. All material on the 6 track, 41:57 minutes long album is well written and consistent in both quality and style. I´ll mention "Nephthys" among the standout tracks, but as mentioned the remaining tracks are certainly worth a mention too.

"With the Dead" is generally a very gloomy and brick heavy album. The crushingly doomy riffs and heavy beats are further enhanced by the raw and powerful sound production. It´s not that the listener is left with many surprises as you more or less get what you´d expect considering the musicians involved, but the quality of the material, the performances, and the powerful sound production, still make "With the Dead" a high quality doom metal release and a 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

Nightfly With The Dead are a new UK doom metal band formed by former Cathedral vocalist Lee Dorrian and the original Electric Wizard rhythm section Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening on bass and drums respectively. Bagshaw also handles guitar duties here as he did in Ramesses, the band he and Greening were members of after leaving Electric Wizard.

With the musicians involved here it should come as no surprise that With The Dead is one heavy mutha of an album. In fact it’s very much what I was expecting. The music bears more resemblance to Electric Wizard than Cathedral excepting their ground breaking debut “Forest Of Equilibrium” which parallels can be drawn. The album consists of just six tracks – all slow, heavy, fuzzy doom metal of the kind of quality you’d expect from these seasoned players. “The Cross” picks up the pace a bit, but this is relatively speaking of course. Quite a short album by today’s standards, none of the songs outstay their welcome clocking in around the six to nine minute mark, but stick around long enough to establish some hypnotic grooves that really get under your skin after a few plays. Highlight for me has got to be “Living With The Dead” with its insistent repetitive riff that once heard doesn’t want to leave your head but the rest of the album is of similar quality. Dorrian’s instantly recognisable vocals are darker and dirtier than most of his Cathedral Output though their final album “The Last Spire” did see a partial return to earlier times.

It’s good to have Dorrian back fronting a band again and not just running his Rise Above Records label. Hopefully this will be more than a one off as its one of the best doom records of 2015.