Kev Rowland This album had a few things going for it before I even put it on the player. Firstly it was released by Black Widow, one of my favourite labels, and I just loved the artwork, which reminded me a great deal of the music of the Seventies. This is the second full-length album from the guys (and at 47 minutes is 12 minutes longer than their last album), and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Lawry and drummer Darin McCloskey have been joined by Brian J Anthony on mellotron. Note the important distinction there: he doesn’t play keyboards plural, but mellotron singular. That is already enough to get many proghead’s pulses racing, as if just one instrument was seen as being key to the Seventies prog sound then that would be it.

There are only five songs, but three of them stretch out to more than ten minutes, so I settled back to enjoy an album that promised to bring together influences from the likes of Black Sabbath, Cathedral, Reverend Bizarre, Camel, King Crimson, Black Widow, Ancestors, Electric Wizard and Atomic Rooster. Well, maybe not quite. There are parts of this album that do gel together very well, but there are others where it is way too workmanlike. The vocals just aren’t powerful enough, and while the guitar sound is beautifully rich and dramatic, with some nice mellotron overlays, there just isn’t enough going on to fully maintain my interest. When I look at Umur’s review on MMA of their previous album he says “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.”. Now I haven’t heard that album, but pretty much can be said for this one. It is okay, but really nothing more than that. www.blackwidow.it

UMUR "Visions of the Haunted" is the debut full-length studio album by UK doom metal act Crowned in Earth. The album was released through Shadow Kingdom Records in May 2010. Crowned in Earth formed in 2008 and released the "Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Crown" demo the same year. "Visions of the Haunted" 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 style 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 dealing with 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 care less and he has a rather unremarkable voice to boot. To top it off the sound production isn´t very well sounding 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 (50%) rating is warranted.