Griftegård – Solemn.Sacred.Severe (2009)

When I first saw the name of the band I assumed they played Black Metal or something related to BM, but to my surprise this relatively new Swedish band plays Doom Metal in the vein of Candlemass and While Heaven Wept.

“Solemn.Sacred.Sever” is the debut full length album from this band, and to be their debut release is pretty solid, but it does not have a single gram of originality in it. And while their particular style is not 100% to my liking, they still manage to pull of an album that I would not mind listening from start to finish.

The use only clear vocals throughout the whole album and Thomas Eriksson, their vocalist, has a pretty solid range and sounds very much like the majority of vocalists of the genre, so there are no surprises here. The music it self is repetitive and at some points catchy, but it gets drowned by the constant reuse of the same riffs over and over, and while for Doom Metal this is something ‘normal’ it gets tedious if the riffs are not very good to begin with.

The overall production of the album is crystal clear, and the instrument I like the most on this album is the drums. They keep everything together very well and feature decent changes in the pace here and there.

There is not much else I can say about this album other that is very traditional for the genre, and that is well played, but nothing to write home about. I hope the band decides to experiment more in the future and come up with a style of their own, they have good musicians, they just need to be more original.

Release: September 11th, 2009

Country: Sweden