ninehertz

The Wright Valley Trio have been around for over a decade now, but it wasn’t until the albums Der Weg and then Metal Doom a few years back before we at ninehertz became aware of, and quickly turning to love these German doom titans. They bring mountainous, totemic doom of the grandest order – the monoliths on the cover of Leben ist Schmerz are telling.

It is over 47 minutes long and yet there are only two tracks, as is their way. The opening title track here takes close to half an hour, requiring you to find the right time to settle in, sit back and absorb this slab of blackness. Notes are dragged out until they nearly disappear, burdened by their own weight. Occasional chinks of light and even melody threaten to appear, but their uprisings are quickly trodden down. At one point, there’s a mad rush of pace taking you by surprise, vocals with to too, but this also is beaten back soon enough, back to its natural slow pace – an exertion doom bands don’t have the energy to sustain. The final lap lurches around, a creeping presence mooching to the close.

Steineschmelzer is a relative slip of a song in comparison, falling short of the 20 minute mark by a few seconds. It generates a blackened mystique in the dense riff beginning, turning, eventually, to a wistful revolving guitar, a rolling cog churning and providing the track its power. The first quieter moment allows for the returning heaviness to stand alone, to showcase its impact. The ending minutes have a gothic aura, mature and grand.

If there’s any complaint, it’s that some passages simply exist, elongating without adding, even within the minimal expectations of droned out doom. It maybe loses out to some of their previous albums in this way, where they held the magic throughout. But this is still a mightily powerful force, a prolonged trial by doom that opens your mind to vast journeys of explorations within the dark cloud heaviness that encases it.