Last Retreat

Your sight is smoldering mutely on dead wastes, and
Through the veil of gray hair you see no familiar shapes.
The silent waiting of her demented eyes is all that’s left,
It doesn’t age and by the ashes of past years is kept

The sand has captured time in crystal orb, and
Doom has measured off your life with a short rope.
Your burden in two pairs of narrow walls will freeze,
When an ax will touch your neck with its sharp teeth.

Low and rumbling with snarled vocals and depressive undertones, the music is not for the faint of heart. However like all good doom, despite the gloom there is still plenty of beauty to be found in the album.

Narrow House is one of those bands that blows your mind, a band that has a powerful and twisted sound. A sound that is beautifully crafted, with quasi-perfect production, amazing lyrics and stellar musicianship. These arrangements are incredible and can not be put in to so little space as I have today.

Though Ukrainians Narrow House hail from a tradition of soul leeching, somber funeral doom, the sound they've adopted for their debut A Key to Panngrieb is actually far brighter, more atmospheric, and their wise incorporation of instruments like a cello and synthesizers helps give this music a far larger breadth than if they had merely trudged along with the same lifeless, disaffected lurch as so many others in this niche.

This band manages to capture the bleakness and drabness of an autumnal mist skillfully in their latest work, "A Key To Panngrieb". [...] The perfect soundtrack for the upcoming cold season.

A Key To Pangriebb is really well crafted, from song arrangements to sound. Narrow House almost effortlessly succeed in conveying the wide ranges of doom, from fragile beauty to crushing loss to abject horror.

I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll often return to the gloomy Panngrieb or not, but I’m sure this magical journey is worth a try. However, I’m pretty sure that NARROW HOUSE’s next visits to the murky underground are very promising and something to look forward to.

ESOTERIC child (which also contains a title, "Beneath This Face" convincingly), this group practice a Funeral Doom very distinct in its statement, totally desperate, requiring slow and devoid of compromise. NARROW HOUSE is not intended to upset the rules fairly limited in this sub-genre: ultra slow tempo, towering riffs, mammoth and rhythmic throat singing.

The fourth and final track on this release, 'Behind the Mask This' is a great finale. By this point in the CD, I had broken down into tears twice because it was such an emotional roller coaster of sound.

On their own terms, Narrow House are the most accomplished new funeral doom band that I have heard in some time: They use the cello and keyboards beautifully to ease the flow from chord to chord in the riff, and the vocals have a fine tone to them.

Solitude Productions once again crosses our path with a mighty fine funeral doom album, this time from Ukraine. When looking at the cover of Narrow House’s ‘A Key To Panngrieb’ I am sure funeral doom is not something that will spring to mind. Pure funeral doom is really isn’t. It’s more psychedelic funeral doom such as we know it from bands such as Esoteric and Faal and in the quieter almost ambient passages of Shape Of Despair.

The album is big, open and spacious like the musicians are not even playing in the same country, let alone the same studio. There are huge gaps in every guitar strike, cymbal and drum hit which makes this seem much slower than what is actually is. They bleed out their music so listening to this is like being strangled to death very very slowly which is a killer hook and perfect for a funeral doom exercise.

It’s virtually flawless in structure, flow, composition, delivery, and production. Narrow House create such a gravitational force with their combination of suffocating heaviness, dreary phantom atmosphere, and solemn melodies that it’s damn near impossible to escape it’s pull into the abyss.

During these 45 minutes of funereal exile, the 'Russian school', let us say, comes in good shape, four themes touched very competent, well-structured, with a good balance between the keys and guitars and a well that throaty voice, sparsely, alternating with a clear tone and lean a little to the tortuous.