Time Signature Outdoom the reaper...

Genre: death-doom

Enter Vulgaari, an American doom metal band who excel in crushing heaviness and Southern grooves. Their eponymous debut album was released in December, 2012, and is a lesson in how to play extremely heavy doom metal without just descending into a chaos of dissonant sludge.

The opening track 'A World Created', which starts straight in the middle of a crushingly heavy doom-laden riff pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album. Making use of crunchy and brutal-sounding downtuned guitars, Vulgaari's debut album does have a bit of a sludgy sound to it, but, for my money, it is much less generic and much more interesting than most ultra-heavy sludge metal I have come across. This is, at its core, doom metal.

The songs on the album evolve around heavy and slow drumbeats accompanied by heavy riffs and droning guitars, which at times are just crushing, and at other times groovy and even melodic, as Vulgaari make use of melancholic guitar harmonies every now and then. Moreover, there is a slight psychedelic feel to some passages, while others almost border on the doom rock associated with the likes of Pentagram, In-Graved, and Bedemon. The vocals are guttural, thus adding a touch of death-doom to the album as well. As doom metal goes, this album really has a lot to offer from all over the doom metal gamut.

Personally, I love the musical side of this album: the riffs are crushing, the harmonies are melancholic, and the grooves are, well, groovy. But the vocals are not my cup of tea. Firstly, they are too weak in the mix for my taste and, secondly, I think that clean vocals would be able to contribute much more to the overall texture of the album in terms of melody. Still, the doom-laden music on the album is itself so awesome that the vocals do not really detract from the overall listening experience.

Fans of crushing death-doom along the lines of Winter should definitely check out Vulgaari; it is an all out doomfest!

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)