YOB (Catharsis) CD

Since their demo, "Elaborations Of Carbon" that was later released as debut with additional cuts, I fell in love with the mighty YOB. But it has earned applause from all kind of directions, too, and so this second album should further help them to get the deserved attention. This time Abstract Sounds is the label instead of 12th Records, who were responsible for the release of "Elaborations Of Carbon". Well, YOB's a pretty powerful sound shovel and their heavy doom sorta takes '90's era Melvins/Sleep stuff a few steps into the open galaxy. The overall hypnotic sound is a thick syrupy brew of echo, metal, texture and volume while the usual length of their cuts is somewhere between 15 and 23 minutes. But YOB have the ability to go over the whole distance without losing the forceful tension within the song structures. The album starts with "Aeons", a slow, relentless monster where the general atmosphere is heavy and brooding, allowing the endless peals of wirey heaviness to blend and mingle into a pulsating whole.

"Catharsis" is rhytmically haunting and repetitive. Each riff builds upon another in a fashion very similar to Sleep's "Jerusalem". The result is a very spacey piece of doom psych that floats like mist on an alien meadow. Between both cuts stucks "Ether" and with 7:16 minutes it's the shortest track here. Here the pace is more up-tempo, but the sound is still weighty as a sledgehammer and YOB are showing that they are not only brilliant in creating slow monolithic tunes. Enough said, buy "Catharsis", crank up the volume and let the hypnotic razor sharp riffs of YOB permeate your perception!

(KK)