OneMetal.com music REVIEW:
Woebegone Obscured – Deathstination

Deathstination is the new album by the ridiculously named Woebegone Obscured, a funeral doom band who hail from Denmark.

Deathstination opens in a typical funeral doom fashion – that is to say, turgidly. Monolithic guitar riffs of the kind a slave army could raise a 500 tonne obelisk to vie with relentless drums in a way reminiscent of two massive yet evenly matched creatures wrestling for supremacy. The whole effect is quite glorious, and if you appreciate down tempo music you’ll almost certainly enjoy this. It isn’t all crushing 30bpm chordal passages though – Woebegone Obscured know, as all good funeral doom bands do, how to create an atmosphere using minimalistic feedback and lengthily held single notes which, when combined with lazily-picked clean riffs, become hypnotic and relaxing, ‘Stalactites’, the fourth of five tracks, is particularly pleasant in this respect. The lead guitar work on the E.P. consists of esoteric melodies in mysterious-sounding scales, absolutely drenched in reverb, lending the whole thing an air of Catacombs to it – though I would venture that the music is possibly less aggressive than that of Catacombs.

Although I have been positive about the music above, if I had to single out one element of this E.P. for praise it would be the production. While it must be said that funeral doom should never ever have the sterile, overmastered production that so many of the death metal subgenres flirt with, I often feel that in their dedication to the analogue, a lot of doom bands go too far the other way and end up with something that is so under-produced that it loses its heaviness – a vital ingredient for good doom. On Deathstination, Woebegone Obscured have, to my ears at least, managed to find a near perfect balance. The drums are raw and trashy, yet they still have enough weight and clarity to drive the music forward even in the faster parts – and make no mistake, this may be funeral doom, but in songs like ‘Maestitia’, the double kick manages to attain a fair old lick. The rhythm guitar tone is fantastically gritty and grainy, which really comes out in the palm muted riffs, and has a warmth that nicely offsets the relentless coldness of the melodies.

Talking of melodies, I do have at least one criticism here for Woebegone Obscured, and that is the criminal under use on this E.P. of vocalist D. Woe’s clean singing. He displays a nice variance of different growls throughout the CD (the principal being the Ahabesque ‘How Low Can You Go?’ style which so often crops up in funeral doom), but his cleans only really make themselves known in “Maestitia”. This is a shame, because his voice is wonderfully mournful, and suits the tone of the music perfectly. I’d love to hear him do more cleans on future releases.

To conclude, Woebegone Obscured aren’t really breaking any barriers here, this is plain old funeral doom, just like mama used to make, but regardless of that, they’ve made a well crafted release with some good songs and good ideas. Worth adding to the collection of any fan of slow, heavy things.

Woebegone Obscured’s MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/woebegoneobscuredband
I, Voidhanger Records’ Website: http://www.i-voidhanger.com

Bottom Line

Not really a lot to say about this, other than very well executed funeral doom from a competent band. No hidden surprises, no bells & whistles, just very very slow doom. Definitely worth buying.