Old Man Gloom – No

June 26, 2012 • Hydra Head Records

I've always been pretty iffy towards Old Man Gloom's output, despite usually being the kind of thing I'd enjoy—heavy sludge combined with weird atmospherics and noisy drone, not to mention some excellent players in the band. Seminar III: Zozobra has so far been their only album to impress me much (though to be fair, it's been ages since I listened to the band), and I am having a really difficult time getting into No.

The band doesn't seem to have changed much since Christmas eight years ago. We still have, as I mentioned, the jagged sludge riffing that betrays the band's connections to both Isis and Converge, the droning interludes à la House of Low Culture, and Turner's strained and ugly vocals that sound more like those of Zozobra (the band) (coincidence?). The sound as a whole is equally strained and ugly, with tense breakdowns and frequent changeups, though they're not afraid to lock into a groove now and again.

Despite everything, I still can't get into Old Man Gloom's approach to songwriting. Most of the time it seems like a chaotic mishmash that's impossible to follow: the first song alone goes from a nice hardcore sludge riff to doomy pounding, then gets these bizarre dissonant blastbeat sections out of nowhere, to just noise and ambience. This kind of diversity isn't inherently a bad thing but I don't think Old Man Gloom handles putting the pieces together very well. Maybe I'm too used to the more traditional structures of Isis and Zozobra (the band); No's shorter tracks have that more traditional structure to them and I find them easier to listen to. So maybe it's just me. (And, to be fair, "Common Species" isn't really representative of the album as a whole, but it still doesn't make a great opener.)

There are moments of goodness, though; "The Forking Path" has a great shimmery opening, and "Regain/Rejoin"'s Torche-esque melodies are really neat as well. The ambient / noise segments are also quite good for a metal album, especially the despairing opening to "Shadowed Hand"—especially as it leads into some really great riffs, making it probably my favorite song on the album.

I'm still on the fence with No, however. It's got a lot of good things going for it, but it's still a very difficult listen, and even after hearing it five times now I still stumble through it. Fans of Turner will probably enjoy it, since not much has changed, as long as they don't expect anything revolutionary.

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