The River - Oneiric Dirges In Mono

*=Staff's pick	Opaque Amber*

Genre	Doom Metal	Vicky	Vocals
Tracks	2	Christian	Guitar
Runningtime	17 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Stephen	Bass
Release	2004	Jonathon	Drums
Country	England	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Candlemass

Slow, dark and severely disted, The River serves us two meals of doom metal. The describe their own music as a "blend of bleak harmonies, seriously heavy riffing and enchanting female vocals". The production does not manage to reproduce all the aspects of the music. It tends to melt together in a massive rumbling sound. It surely is slow - the first tone of Opaque lasts for about one minute. I almost was about to start banging on my CD-player and speakers to see what was wrong when the drums finally enters the sound. I must say though, that the slow keyboard at the end of the song, that almost seems to want to run away, but just manages to go slightly out of time, is brilliant.

Amber goes slightly faster (which doesn't really say much). The vocals from Vicky is soft and (in a doom-way) beautiful, with a touch of Celtic nerve. In the harmonic song-melodies lies a certain strength to build on. The end of the song might be too stretched out in more noise than music though. I'll probably need to hear more to make a fair judgement. It's a promising start, but a whole record in the same tempo and style may become boring for one like me, who likes simple rock 'n' roll-metal in the first room. Anyway, it is slowly growing on you and I'm looking forward to the forthcoming demo Different Ways To Be Haunted.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
3	7	5

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - David