THE WANDERING MIDGET (The Serpent Coven) LP/CD
After the release of 'I Am The Gate', a compilation of the first two demos, THE WANDERING MIDGET was busy working on new material. This leads to their new album 'The Serpent Coven', which was released in 2008 by Eyes Like Snow, a divison of Northern Silence Productions. In musical terms, things haven't changed much. Furthermore, the Finnish band remain faithful to their minimalist doom metal approach. Unfortunately, they embody all silly doom metal cliches so that it takes a lot of patience and good will to get through the total playing time of almost 55 minutes. With exception of 'Pillars Of Sapiris' each song is almost over the ten-minute mark, there are a couple of slothfully slow songs and the vocals are over the limit of my personal pain threshold. If there wouldn't be that excessively declaimed style of singing I could enjoy at least some of the riffs, but 'The Serpent Coven' is becoming unbearable for me very quickly. In addition, there are a couple of guitar solos that sound out of tune while the drummer is limited to the absolute minimum that is necessary. In all fairness, however, I should mention that THE WANDERING MIDGET is attempting to bring a little variety into the album. For example, the title track becomes faster at the end and the intro is also very nice. Apart from that, there are substantial differences in terms of quality to the last release from Eyes Like Snow, which was the debut of Apostle of Solitude. Of course there will be enough people, who think that this is a new "cult" band, but luckily I'm not among them.
(KK)