The Slow Death - Siege Review

Female fronted bands may change everything we know about Metal music. To review a Doom Metal effort to me has always been a chalenge. It takes me a lot of thoughts and reasonings to choose the right words to say and what to say. It also takes the band a lot of efforts to make me have interest in them and to keep my interest in them as well. It’s not that I’m not attracted to Doom, but the band needs to have something else to attract me. In the case of The Slow Death and “Siege” deliver a female vocalist with a church organ that give them some 1970’s Heavy Rock mood and some modern features of Symphonic Metal besides the shoegazed and slow guitars and cadence. The textures and layers of sound the band sew here are really amazing. The Slow Death here achieves a very important goal that is to transcend their genre and go beyond it. Needless to say that this goal is really difficult to achieve in this so mulfaceted world of modern Metal music.

The church organ in the opening track “Tyranny” sounds amazing embellished with the guitar phrasings. The contrast between Mandy Andresen’s voice and Gamaliel’s is as amazing as it can be. The kind of musical contrast I really like. The thing is that this contrast makes the song sound more balanced and doesnt give the fan the impression of being longer than needed. It runs smoothly in the player. It’s interesting the way the band builds the song as bricks being carefully put each by each to construct the wall of sound the band delivers. It’s possible to count more than five moments in the song along the almost twenty minutes it rolls. Following track “Famine” starts smooth and gentle as the soft rain that falls after a long dry season. It refreshes the air with the subtle layers of strummings and the comfy voice of Mandy Andresen sounding as the raing that pours. Guitars begin as slow as the rain and go growing stronger as the song goes by. As its previous track “Tyranny” “Famine” was built with many layers of sound put carefully together. The difference is that “Famine” received stronger galloping guitars embellished with that twin guitar movement we all love in Metal music. The Slow Death did wonders in managing all the changes of movements they wanted to give the song. Guitars here are amazing. The song acquired that Metal punch that all Metal fans appreciate and cherish. One more time the band goes beyond genre. The impression the fan gets is that there many short songs inside this long track. On the other hand, “Pestilance” is the only track in the album that has a lot of doomy features. However, Mandy Andresen kind of hides the idea. This idea of gathering together many short songs in a longer goes throughout “Siege” and, in fact, it’s the glue that connects all of them. For that I guess that “Siege” is an album that will please all metallers.

The Slow Death “Siege” will be released on August 27th via Transcending Obscurity Records.

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