Death & Destiny

As Scotland's James Abilene waxes witch-y and kooky on his side of the pond (i.e. West of the North Sea), the Netherlands' very own "Double O" or Bobby L., in olde hande Tjeerd de Jong, trounces doom metal pros far and wide with his straightforward, no frills, ruefully congenial brand of stoically down-tuned overtures - ten of which are gladly gleaned off his latest, albeit solo, enterprise which entails the wickedly titled Phantom Druid and respective full-length debut, Death & Destiny (released January 29th, digitally and independently, as well as on CD, under Off The Record Label, the [skeleton] keystone to TJ's prior ventures, the prolific Stone In Egypt, alongside glum and blackly nascent Witchcult 71).

On first listen, considerably dug Death & Destiny, in view of its grand, ominous homage towards the now vastly recognized and revered "D.C. Doom" scene i.e. the Maryland/District of Columbia surge of Sabbath-ian (or Black Sabbath schooled) heavies such as Internal Void, Life Beyond, War Injun, The Hidden Hand, Nitroseed, Earthride, and, of course, which else but the almighty Pentagram, largely considered the grandad of them all - to employ variable terms, the original, premier and/or vintage trailblazer kick-starting this scene back in the mid-1980s, its 70s "heavy blues rock/proto-metal" heyday by then long past.

Effectively, the fact Mr. De Jong realized this fully brooding, grinding swamp-fest by his lonesome is hard to believe whence assailed by salty stew of heady, power chord and slow bend tweaked riffs, starting with the colossal "Colossal Gate", a five minute-some, cyclical dirge of crankily mashed, standard 4:4 rhythms, which, for all intents and (crossed) purposes, led me to muse Windows Media Player was frozen in mendacious loop.

'Tis thus, even though musicianship is elementary, albeit solid, in its constitution, with anodyne, if not taken-for-granted, sparsity of vocal impressionism, what makes D & D work so well is, indeed, such laconic shrewdness & frugality , as they render chilled-out, bopping listeners into all specie of fulminating figure fours, with no intention - or ability! - to tap out or surrender. Had there been a prevalence of freakout pentatonic soloing a la V. Griffin or S. Weinrich, might've felt liberal with my score. However, in fairness, it's precisely, as inferred, such (bone) dryness and overturned, churning momentum that allow the songs, on the whole, to drag us to bottom of the pit (or grodier yet, grave), whilst, submerged in the cool earth, shoveled over with soil - hence, the diametric candlestick end of a nativity in black...

Speaking of, "Soul Coffin" displays a bit of old school, "Fluff" styled clean guitar progression-ing before morphing into grim n' scurvy, wonkily semi-reverb'd audiotronics highly reminiscent of Be Forewarned era P-Gram, circa 1994, year The West Memphis Three were erroneously, not to mention grotesquely, convicted of super sordid triple child murders and sentenced, to the full extent of the law. Their so-called exoneration took eighteen years; it's a long story. (Skewed Arkansas justice aside, was, indeed, at certain point, such as townspeople and crooked judge, bent towards casting PD to the wolves due to paucity of leads [pun intended] as well as evident similarity between tracks, which span just over forty vinyl conducive minutes.)

Alternatively, the following, equally Liebling-esque worthy, "Darkness Descends", begins in caliginous-ly roving and gruff, towering fashion - with, actually, a crisply baked soloing undertow which lays low in the mix, but is there, all the same - prior to literally "descending", at the last minute, into an instrumentally eldritch, violin & glockenspiel laden "sub-basement" (yet, here, should be likened to "root cellar").

Another auspicious facet consists of how smoothly each cut segues into the next, and thus, at the lumpish drop of a crystal skull. Surely, Tjeerd is more than fugacious; sometimes, he's too congruous for his own good, as "Slow Savage" parlays itself in precisely the same manner - weighty and ponderous-as-shit at the beginning, then wispily Devil Witches'-like nearing its "destined" conclusion. Personally, top highlight entails the swollen, bass-heavy and ever-grooving "After the Twilight Gloom", due to its sleazy, crotchety appeal, alongside [medium] rare guitar solos, harvested as worricow - or is that scarecrow?

Comparably jerking and crash-cymbal-ized, Demon Eye-modeled swagger (over)rules "Burning Truth"; hence, in closing paragraph alone, have relegated memorable passages in full technicolor, though vagarian-prone, glory. While Phantom Druid's Death & Destiny fails to reinvent the wheel, rest assured puts it to good, executionary, Medieval (ab)use!