Chained To The World (Solitude Productions)

 “Chained To The World” is the third and latest release of these Dutch Sludge/Doom Metal act, which following the quite successful path of the band’s previous effort “From Cosmos To Chaos”, delivers here seven new slabs of crawling and heavy Sludge/Doom Metal. This time the band seems to have left behind a little (just a little) of the Doom Metal laden obscurity to embrace a groovier/aggressive Stoner-like atmosphere, of course you can still found at this album obscure and doomish heaviness, tracks such “Maelstrom”, “Looking Into The Makers Eyes” and “Waiting To Die” maintains the obscure, still catchy, atmosphere of “From Cosmos To Chaos”... The vocal work shows at this album a varied, strong and sometimes very passionate style, just listen to “Eternal Crawl”, where the rocking and tough clean vocals reaches its highest point. The riff department still plays crawling and heavy, but slightly groovier tan before even showing some minor influences of bands such Black Label Society at some passages… A great display of heaviness and obscurity is shown at tracks such the closing one “Waiting To Die”, one of the strongest and most original tracks of the entire album, enclosing metallic and dense atmospheres mixed with some fast paced sludgy parts, resulting in an incredibly aggressive lava stream… As with the band’s previous album, the production here is not a problem; this album was recorded, mixed and produced at Contribution of The Void Studio (Celestial Season among others) so expect nothing but professionalism and quality… Although I still prefer the slightly obscurer sound of “From Cosmos To Chaos”, I think “Chained To The World” is definitely a strong release as well, that will easily catch the attention of every Sludge, Doom and even Stoner Metal diehard. This album was also released in a limited vinyl LP format (the first release of Solitude Production in this format by the way), so if also are into the vinyl fever, here’s another good reason to get this release. (AP)