Doomsday

Despite very clearly starting life as some kind of doom death outfit, Calliophis gain the distinction of being the only act I can name who mix that style with random elements of rock ‘n’ roll, plus some dubious soundbites that veer from horror movie bone-crunching (‘Little Ease’) to sounds of the great outdoors, the gulping of water, belching, and later someone tuning a radio (‘Balanced on a Knife Edge’). Those are usually things I expect to say about a humorous grind outfit, so I think it’s fair to claim that these Germans set out with exuberance but not a very clear idea of where to go. That makes Doomsday quite entertaining and extremely uneven.

I’m calling this doom death with rock ‘n’ roll influences because certain parts of this listen have a strangely bouncy groove to them, more like a stoner or sludge act than the deep, gurgly vocals and thick slow riffs would suggest. You see, ‘Little Ease’ has those belched sustained-chord verses with fun little breakdowns inserted between them, like we’ve spun off from the trip into the crypt and stumbled into ‘70s jam rock. Other songs have more consistency, especially ‘Romasanta’ and ‘Munk’, which was later to become the band’s calling card as they recorded 3 separate chapters of the same story. Stretching beyond 9 minutes, ‘Munk’ weighs in heftiest and most oppressing of the 7 main songs (2 are instrumental intro and outro), really getting the tone of Peaceville’s early releases, among whom I’m reminded specifically of Anathema with their chunky riffs and sinuous melodic bent. The female vocals on ‘Romasanta’ also link to the gothic side of the genre for the first time, fleshing out a story that seems to be about a forbidden lust with a sister's lover.

While certain questionable decisions show the band’s inexperience, I generally find Doomsday both more enjoyable and easier to remember than the more mature Cor Serpentis, so let that be a lesson to bands when trying to satisfy me in the future. I guess my favourable opinion comes from the variety and willingness to explore that I hear from Calliophis’s debut, where an incongruous idea wasn’t thrown away but put into practice anyway, meaning that each song has its own character. I also get the better side of slightly unbalanced production, seeing as I prefer the guitars to be chunky slabs of groovy goodness and don’t mind the intrusive cymbal taps from the drums, even if the record as a whole has quite an approximate sonic profile. Besides, when cuts like 'No Life' and 'One Flame One Illusion' stick to their serious intentions for a while, the effect is genuinely satisfying, both in terms of power and atmosphere. Doomsday may depress some, but it's far from a nadir for Calliophis.