Hour of Judgement

I heard about this band a few months ago after a friend told me they were planning on releasing a split alongside Apostle of Solitude and The Flight of Sleipnir. Being a big fan of the latter (and admittedly never hearing the former at that moment in time) I decided to give Rituals Of The Oak a shot, a relatively young band from Australia who released a demo in 2009 with their first full length, Hour of Judgement, following several months later.

I haven't heard a good amount of Aussie doom, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Disappointingly I was met with a stereotypical cliche. That's not to say that I disliked the album, at least not entirely. On first listen I was bored, the vocals were interesting but not enough to hold my interest for a long period of time. The instrumentation was forgettable, the lyrics completely redundant since I lacked the motivation to listen to them following a plethora of cliched terminology and words flying at me through the speakers. However I still liked it enough to keep it handy for a spin every so often.

Since then I've revisited it several times, each time changing my opinion ever so slightly and gaining something new. Now that I've had time to mull it over, I find that my opinion hasn't changed that greatly. I still feel that this album isn't a necessary addition to the doom metal genre, yet I don't find it unnecessary either. I still think the pace is frustratingly stale with an atmosphere that builds up leading to absolutely no climax or release whatsoever, but despite the filling monotonous plodding guitar there are a number of moments that shine through as genuinely memorable. This is thanks largely to the vocalist, however I still get the feeling she never has the chance to really showcase her potential, at least not on this release.

That's really my main complaint with this release; despite showing a huge amount of potential the band instead decides to squander it by playing paint-by-numbers doom pockmarked with cliches both musical and lyrical. Maybe they wanted to hammer out a release quickly, I'm not entirely sure, but I think if they had taken their time they could have really created something of much higher value and originality.

I'm not saying this album is bad, it's just mediocre. There are some great moments scattered throughout if you pay attention, with the second song being probably the best the album has to offer. Guaranteed some of the vocal melodies will re-emerge several days later, leaving you baffled yet intrigued for not knowing exactly where it's from yet finding it pleasing all the same.

This isn't an essential release by any stretch of the imagination, it has numerous cliches bogging it down, but it shows a huge amount of promise for this band. I trust they'll find their groove and release something much more mature and memorable eventually, but for now this is worth picking up if not only for those bright spots that appear every so often. It's definitely an album that will grow on you over time if you give it the chance.

Nigga damn this is one boring album. It's like watching a tree grow, as boring as watching concrete weather. It's just really freakin boring, and coming from me that's saying something.

Everyone in the band is competent, and all do their very best to keep the band staying boring. The guitars plod, and plod, and plod; they lack memorability, they lack crushing tone, they lack menace, they lack atmosphere, they lack visiousness. You name it, they lack it. Sure, they're in time and in tune, but that's about it. Plod plod plod plod plod- I'm not saying that the occaisonal burst of speed is necessary, or even welcome, but here a uptempo riff once in a while would've be rad, especially with the alternative being the desolate wasteland of boredom. Slow, MOR-era Sabbath style riffs that aren't going anywhere in any hurry, for those really keen on some musical description. You've heard it before, you've heard it in a much more interesting context.

Yeah, you could pretty much copy and paste that last paragraph and replace guitars with everything else and you've got the album. The vocalist isn't bad but never seems to sound like she's fully projecting, or like she's really getting into it. She's always singing at 70% capacity, you know? Not the most inspiring singer, for sure; although her vocal lines in the title track are pretty effective. Meanwhile the rhythm section do their best to drive the plod into your head, never changing up the tempo, never adding anything interesting that will get your heart beating a bit faster and/or your eyelids rising.

It's weird, I can happily listen to Earth's first EP where there'll just be one riff for 18 minutes and that works wonders, hypnotic, doomy as shit. Meanwhile, this bores the shit out of me, despite the more complex arrangements, vocals, busier guitars etc. The thing I end up asking myself here is: what is this album's function? It's clearly no hypno-drone/doom monolith, it fails as a trad doom release, it's not epic in the Candlemass vein, ithere's no stoner influence to be found- t's just sitting there, this directionless plodding nothing. Did Rituals really consider what they were going for with this album? I get the feeling that they just got a bunch of riffs they'd thought out and threw them all together without really considering that hey, these tunes aren't actually doing anything but sitting there and boring everyone.

Again, this band isn't awful and I feel kind of bad for ripping on a bunch of dudes (incidentally, Transcending Mortality are also a pretty bad band) who's hearts are most likely in the right place and so on and so forth. Fact remains though that at the end of the day this just isn't an exciting album, if fact it's not exciting, in fact it's ruthlessly, incredibly, unbelievable boring. Avoid!

Female fronted doom metal is a difficult topic for many people to get their heads around. There seems to be a lot of misogyny in regards to metal as most males would prefer male singers because male vocalists have a stronger approach when it comes to hard edged music such as doom. I myself am on the fence. Comparisons to bands like the cult classic British band Mourn and Belgians catchier Serpentcult are bound to be made simply because all three acts are fronted by women, two of which are seemingly quite attractive -- generally an important characteristic of bands with female members spearheading their act in the vocal department because it attracts a different type of audience. Whilst one side of the audience is attracted by the musical abilities of a female fronted band, others will definitely be swayed by an attractive member being in the limelight. Although that is usually the case for 90% of doom/gothic hybrids, this Australian doom metal act from Sydney have seemingly attached Sabine to the project because of her talents in the vocal department.

Unbeknownst to me, I was aware of her existence before I came across this band, Rituals of the Oak. She currently also performs for Lycanthia and though I’ve not heard the independent EP entitled ‘Within The Walls’, on which she participated vocals on, I have heard their 1999 full-length debut ‘Myriad’. I must admit, I’m not a fan of it. It came highly rated by various reviewing website specialists, but I found it to be wanting. Lycanthia were definitely one of those types of doom metal bands who relied too heavily on a female performance to make them more unique than they should perhaps be viewed as. I’ve also had a few encounters with another band she has ties too, Kimaera, though I’ve completely forgotten what they sound like. I do know that they have a respectable reputation amongst death/doom fans, so her talents have been well documented in the past by both musicians, fans and critics alike. Her performance here isn’t exactly what I would call stellar, but it is pleasing to the ear.

She definitely isn’t the type of woman who aims at overshadowing her fellow band members as her performance is somewhat muted. The production probably doesn’t help as the instrumentation, especially, doesn’t feel very rich until we encounter songs like ‘Drown The Wood In Blood’ which is significantly more upbeat than the previous song self-titled song, ‘Hour of Judgment’, which is supposedly a showcase of how this Australian act are akin to bands like Candlemass, Solitude Aeternus and even Warning with their slow paced, emotional style of riffing and vocals. The music, for me, isn’t anywhere near as emotionally draining as bands like Warning, though songs like ‘Standing in the House of Suffering’ do occasionally come close with its wonderful style of repetitious riffing and closely followed bass work. The drums certainly aren’t as pressing as I expected. As I stated earlier, the production isn’t very rich in texture. The structures can feel very regimented and there is a discipline to how things evolve which feels quite predictable at times, but it doesn’t make the album any less enjoyable, particularly when the vocals are brought into play.

The album feels fairly monotonous throughout, but this is doom metal, right? I suppose given that fact I should expect a fairly flat environment for the music to build from. The vocals seemingly aim to replenish the under-developed production job as they’re rather splendiferous on occasions. I don’t think they work as well as Pat Walker’s vocals of Warning. His voice really is torturous and emotionally draining, but Sabine does a commendable job, though she does bring the issue of whether female vocalists aren’t as strong at conveying sheer desolation as male vocalists. She gives the album a more romanticised vibe, which I suppose it nice. She does somewhat remind me of Michelle, the former vocalist of Serpentcult who has now sadly departed the band. The instrumentation, bar song three, isn’t as catchy as Serpentcult’s, but it definitely is as memorable despite that given the intelligent riffing, with the bass playing alongside it with a very edgy feel and unique vocal approach.

There are many bands in this type of mould with a very melancholic doomier sound, so it was important for the band to supply a major difference in the forefront of the atmosphere and Sabine definitely provides a feeling of uniqueness despite there being bands of this nature who use female vocalists, too, though they’re normally a lot more obscure, like Mourn, for example. There is a very rigid nature to this style, but the female vocals do allow a more expansive element to flow at the forefront of the sound. With Michelle’s departure from Serpentcult and there being one too many mediocre female fronted bands around, Rituals of the Oak are an exciting addition to the doom metal scene in Australia and world wide because there isn’t exactly an abundance of this types of bands, though they do exist quietly in the underground. ’Hour of Judgement’ is a mature, professional album which shows a lot of potential in this young Australian act, but there is still work to be done.