Questions are immediately raised when about halfway through the first song 'Pressure' by Anathema (A Fine Day to Exit era) comes to mind. It's hard to say why Wijlen Wij decided to add a decidedly prevalent rock influence (to both the song and the album) to their already amazing mix but it doesn't do anything positive for their sound.
Of the sound in general a few things are of note. Firstly the guitars (thankfully) aren't as fuzzy as they were on the first album, but the bass is ridiculously high in the mix. There are some strong pure funeral elements throughout the psychedelic hippy dippy aspects that seems to be Kostas' ever growing obsession are jammed in between. Making no sense and pretty much ruining the songs. Apparently Kostas wasn't content with ruining Pantheist and thus had to branch in to his other band.
The vocals, provided by Lawrence van Haecke, are a mixed bag at best. His grows are beastly and awesome but his cleans are laughable. Dude sounds like he should singing in some obscure folk act in the American south.
The instrumentation is a step up from the first album. The drums are much tighter and the keyboards are more than just chorded droning organ dirges. Good for the drums bad for the keyboards. The bass obnoxiously drown out the guitar in some places. The actual doom parts are pretty damn good for what it's worth. Had they simply stuck to this formula this album would probably have been in the running for top ten of 2014.
There's no real darkness or depth to the music. So what do we have here after all is said and done? A faster paced, slightly better produced slice of doom with some really bad blending of two substances akin to water and oil. Somethings just aren't meant to be blended and 60's rock and funeral doom are two of those things. This gets a 4/10
Words: Grimm Doom