Woburn House: Sleep Summer Storm

There's no doubt that Doom is an acquired taste. Although I do admit to immediately contradicting that statement by confiding that whilst I'm not exactly a huge supporter of this style of music, there are some bands who have the ability to draw me in. Sleep Summer Storm from Germany's Woburn House is not only one of those albums, but it is probably also the album I would pick out to convert the naysayers to Doom's cause.

Wilfully depressing and crawling in pace, the third album from Woburn House manages to create a spell from which it is a real struggle to wrestle free. The mainly clean guitars and deep, rasping, resonating vocals somehow lull as they sludge by, leaving you somehow uplifted by the sheer desolation of it all. The voice of Christian Kolf owes much to the late Peter Steel of Type O Negative, with his uber deep delivery bringing a lush despair to the already gloomy themes. What makes this such a clever album however is the band's ability to chime in with surprisingly bright acoustic guitar passages that genuinely lift the mood of this album without ever compromising its atmosphere. The best example of this is the title track "Sleep Summer Storm", where the utterly broken vocals compete with an almost catchy acoustic motif and intoxicatingly tight drumming courtesy of Florian Toyka.

More about atmosphere than "songs", Woburn House don't vary their outlook much from song to song. However the sheer believability of the eight tracks presented here makes for an experience that feels completely immersive and almost suffocating with its uncompromising earnestness. However when the heartbreak is as telling as it is on the short "Behind You", or as hypnotically mesmerising as it is on "Rain Keeps Falling Down", then the similarity from track to track never becomes an issue.

Doom shouldn't feel as good as this. But I'm glad it does!

Track Listing
1. Willow
2. Shifter
3. Rain Keeps Falling Down
4. Clash
5. Sleep Summer Storm
6. Behind You
7. A Simple Man
8. Hood

Added: March 24th 2012
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Woburn House MySpace
Hits: 1999
Language: english

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