Atarxie - Slow Transcending Agony (2005)

   Even though funeral doom and death/doom metal didn't become potencial audience favorites, both styles made a large step compared to the '90s. The poor rehearsal sound of funeral doom classics passed as the numbers of similar bands increased such as the quality of their music.
   Ataraxie was a perfect example to illustrate the progress. Their debut "Slow Transcending Agony" was such an all-round high quality record, that wasn't common to find previously. Slow, repetitive melodies gave the basic down-pulling atmosphere of their songs that are sounding like chapters of pure endless agony. The clear and excellent sound quality seemed more effective on this field than noise created atmosphere. It's a great mix of death and doom metal, as it's introducing perfectly the hopelessness of long term suffer, that seems like will never end. The heaviness came by the noisy themes and the butally deep growling that ends up often in agonizing screams. The song lengths and their monotonely bouncing slowness reached the level of funeral doom, but sometimes turns to intense hammering. The contrast they've created by these rare but repeating speed changes left the dominating role to dark melancholy, so there is definitely enough time for the listener to face it's inner suffer before some refreshing aggression arrives. It's a strongly recommended album for the fans of depressing heaviness.