Yob - The Unreal Never Lived

*=Staff's pick	Quantum Mystic* Grasping Air Kosmos The Mental Tyrant

Genre	Doom Metal	Mike Scheidt	Vocals
Tracks	4	Mike Scheidt	Guitar
Runningtime	52 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Isamu Sato	Bass
Release	05 Sept. 2005	Travis Foster	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

American extreme doom band Yob are back with the release of their fourth album, following up Elaborations Of Carbon (2001), Chatarsis (2003) and The Illusion Of Motion (2005) which all have received worldwide critical acclaim. According to their biography, they started out as a stoner/doom band but what reaches my ears here is nothing less than pure doom in its slowest form. A massive wall of sound with repetitive riffs, almost meditative, and it is all very atmospheric.

There are not many vocals present on this album. The few that occur are sometimes high pitched screaming, sometimes close to death metal vocals which are the ones that sound the best according to me, but for the most of the time it is instrumental. Most people call what Yob do 'doom' but I would prefer calling it very slow, phsycadelic rock/metal. It is a bit spacy, it is a bit 70's and it's hypnotising. Perhaps it should fall under the category 'doom' anyway, or....perhaps not. I find it very hard categorizing this.

Since I am no big consumer of the genre, I can not say that this is better or worse than anything else related, but time goes relativly and surprisingly quick when listening to this and that is a good sign. I don't get bored during the four 10+ minute songs (one of them even clocks in at around 21 minutes). I would however have wished for just a few more nuances and breaks in the songs for it to be really good in my book, and perhaps the closing song The Mental Tyrant is just a tiny bit too long and eventless the first 16 minutes, up to the point where there is a surprising and welcome galopping riff.

This is not really my bag, if you dig, but definitely something for you doom and 'drone light' appreciators.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
6	6	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tommy