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Ahab: The call of the wretched sea
17/02/11 || Habakuk
Whales. Big, chubby, friendly whales. Peaceful consumers of Krill. Helplessly washed ashore from time to time, or harpooned by cruel Norwegians and Japanese. You are metal as fuck.
The jury is still out on why exactly, but the facts speak for themselves. I mean, Mastodon have excelled with “Leviathan” whose concept you should be familiar with, people can’t stop salivating over Gojira’s Save the Whales-metal, and last but not least, there was Ahab going full-frontal with their suffocating debut “The call of the wretched sea”. If you’re an aspiring metal band looking into album composition, I say go for whales. Incorporate as many whales as you can into your music. Zombies are dead, as in conceptually. With whales though, there’s a high statistical chance that your shit is bound to rule.
So thought Ahab, and off they went to produce a massive slab of funeral doom metal. The result is an ultra-slow release of monumental, crushing, dark atmosphere. A musical bottomless pit dragging you in with ethereal melodies and acoustic passages, then surrounding you with total and absolute darkness. Only traces of the hypnotic melody bait follow as you’re pulled down deeper below into the unseen.
Fancy shit, eh? Now funeral doom is in no way something Ahab invented, but where other bands use a drugged-out, sludge-fuzz ridden psychedelia approach, low-fi sound gargling or ambient-like droning to get to a similar effect, Ahab come across as much more focused, and in that even (canyadigit) accessible. They manage to do this despite staying within the boundaries of their by all means extreme style – this is not a death-doom “cop-out”, so to speak. Keeping things interesting thus is no small feat, given the fact that their songs are all about 9 minutes long. Still, while there is some meditative quality to the album, there is noticeable progression and songwriting to be found, and it’s not at the expense of the oppressive atmosphere. Strong support for this comes from an absolutely massive production, ultra-deep and awesome vocals, a fat wall of guitars and a very skilled use of synthies that work as part of a soundscape, not an annoying attention whore.
While certain people, presumably those who have listened to Thergothon and Om exclusively for the last decade, might dismiss this as overhyped, I, having been introduced to the genre by this here album, have to disagree. To me, this is the best album to come out of their genre yet. Sure it’s overhyped if you expect 72 minutes of reverb that gets you headbanging – once. Or if you enjoy meta-listening to music, that is, valuing the idea behind it more than what actually comes out of your speakers. Sorry pal, “The call of the wretched sea” doesn’t take the subgenre to an extreme. Big fucken deal. However, by focusing on the music instead of the concept, Ahab take it to the awesome. And add whales.
- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Napalm Records
- Website: www.ahab-doom.de
- Band
- Daniel Droste: vocals, guitars, keyboards
- Chris Hector: guitars
- Stephan Adolph: bass, guitars, vocals
- Corny Althammer: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Below the sun
- 02. The pacific
- 03. Old thunder
- 04. Of the monstrous pictures of whales
- 05. The sermon
- 06. The hunt
- 07. Ahab’s oath
