The Sullen Route - Madness of My Own Design (2010)

    The Sullen Route's debut was such a death/doom masterpiece that's rare to find. And it's also a quite underrated album, but that didn't come only from the ignorance of the main scene, but the band was also responsible for that by their drastic and disappointing style change in the followings. 
   However, "Madness of My Own Design" shows the most effective aspect of the style by it's mix of incredible heaviness and melancholic approach. Very catchy and melodic leads are embedded into extended songs and into clean sound that's preferably ending up in noisy themes. The main impression is definitely emotional, but the great guitar leads are opening further depths for the listener, and the very deep animalistic growling vocal style has an extremely powerful touch. The music used to have a tragic and gothic related tone, but being assisted by heavy riffs and deep growls it cannot merge completely into the swamp of everlasting sadness, and becomes to a more ongoing thing. Even though none of these could count as new in death/doom metal, but still the album gave a new aspect to the style, that's the same time very catchy, emototionally effective and devastating. It's kind of the mix of the 2 most common directions of the style, the audience-friendlier melodic and melancholy based or romantic death/doom (that's evidently more dominant here) and the less popular, exaggerated, heavier and noisier sound based death/doom.