The Calm Hunter

I always used to think Isole were French. While this may not sound like a very serious mistake to make, it totally changed my perspective on the band, since I don’t really have a clear idea of what French doom metal should sound like, whereas having learned that they are in fact Swedish rather put a dampener on my curiosity. For all that, there is still something a bit different about the four-piece, since they adhere to the austere and thoughtful tenets of the epic doom genre without shirking more aggressive riffs or injections of pace. Prone to a more progressive style of songwriting than masters of epic doom like Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus, Isole heap a lot of content into their songs, which makes The Calm Hunter a dense and lengthy listen even at only 51 minutes.

What this album draws closest to is a more boisterous and less reverent - though equally sorrow-filled - travel through doom’s heartlands of woe and regret as imagined by Swallow the Sun and October Tide in the 21st century. Guitars chug heartily, death growls meet monkish croons and choir-boy cleans, while some sections leap off the track and scramble down a hillside at pace. The important thing here is to recognize that Isole are not following the established rules of this style as they did a little too closely on past releases, but attempting to introduce some new features and add excitement, though not at the expense of losing the sombre mood. This is immediately apparent from the way the title track skips off its marks instead of building atmosphere or opening gradually, while ‘The Eye of Light’ and ‘Perdition’ also bear marks of the same character. The lightness and ease of movement implied by this ability to change pace keeps the listener guessing throughout The Calm Hunter, plus adds to the weight of the gloomier doom sections. The energetic guitar tone and variety of riffing styles generally work well, giving ballast to the songs and driving the compositions forward, especially in the case of the powerful riffs of ‘The Eye of Light’, which gain atmosphere from the vocal melody, creating a perfect balance between the key elements of energy and emotion.

The way that Isole veer away from the obvious is also a pleasant surprise, since doom metal can take its own gravity a little too seriously, meaning that some bands refuse to stray from the typical trudging melancholy. Avoiding this trait may be a result of the band’s tendency to use song dynamics to affect the emotions generated, since some of the pieces here build intensity towards the end, while others wind down in gentler style. An example of the former would be the initially despondent closer ‘My Regret’, which appears at first to be motoring vaguely towards a conclusion until it swells up powerfully to lead us out of the album. On the other hand, ‘Alone in Silence’ loses steam after a very enjoyable five minutes because of the opposite approach, so not all of the band’s experiments work perfectly. Nevertheless, the end result is for the album to feel varied and full even with only seven songs on offer, whereas early efforts like Forevermore were too homogeneous for their own good.

A prominent feature of the band’s sound has always been the transition between heavy and clean parts, though these are not used successfully throughout the album. Due to a progressive structuring in some songs, clean parts can appear too suddenly or remain for too long, leaving the otherwise impressive ‘The Eye of Light’ with a weak bridge that serves little purpose to the progress of the song. The lack of truly memorable vocal parts also dogs certain songs, since neither clean nor harsh vocals have a distinct quality to them, tending to stay in the background, while the sections that are sparser musically would benefit from a powerful doom singer like Robert Lowe to add some emotion and grandiosity. That said, when the clean vocals follow the riffs and the harsh vocals erupt with anger during ‘Into Oblivion’, the combination is hard to fault. Also present on this album are several melodic moments that flurry around the basic song chassis in a manner that sometimes makes one think of melodeath (as in ‘Dead to Me’) but often sound menacing or ethereal in a true doom sense, like during ‘Perdition’. These are very effective, either breaking up the occasionally plodding traditional doom fare and lifting the mood or crushing down harder to produce feelings of loss and despair.

The Calm Hunter is not an immediately accessible album, partly due to its deviations from the doom metal norm, though it grows more potent with each listen and some of the odd structures begin to reveal their merits. Hardest to follow is the title track, although that probably has the best ideas among the songs here, while ‘The Eye of Light’ is a more instant highlight. It’s refreshing to see a band such as Isole step up and take charge of their destiny like this: if they plan to continue in the same distinctive direction, they might well become leaders in a new wave of doom metal.

Originally written in edited form for Metalegion magazine #2 - www.metalegion.com