Doomed - The Ancient Path (2012)

   Doom metal and any of it's aspect is quite rare to find in the German metal scene, since it was dedicated to intensity since the '80s. It's enough to think about the classic, so called Teutonic thrash bands. This main tendency didn't change much during the decades as new styles showed up to give a new meaning to musical extremity, therefore the appearence of Doomed counted as something pretty extraordinary. 
  The band intended to pick up the that time most updated form of death/doom in the most accurate way, that's overwhelmingly heavy, melancholic, and  melodic the same time and gets introduced by high sound quaility. For a beginner band that's definitely not a small task, since this style is far not so easy as it might seem like. And considering that Doomed started as a one man project, and the music on all instruments and vocals were performed by Herr Pierre Laube, the selected mission needed way more effort than how most could imagine. Even though the planned standards were pretty high, "The Ancient Path" not only matched the desired level, but also became the unique gem of the German metal scene. The album is all-round quite unified, even the concept of it's design is genuine. The record mixes well hell deep heaviness with melancholic atmosphere and returning catchy melodies. However it doesn't lack some experimenting ambitions that are more common to find from the second half of the album. Those are represented in softer tone both by music and vocal style. The softer theme switches on the side of clear singing are not always able to comply to the main theme of the anctual songs, and that got close to break the unity of the album. But fortunately since they've showed up only for short term, and other, more fortunate theme experiments worked out better, their comensing role helped to keep the unity. Probably the quality, quantinty, and level of melodies were tested on the side of their balance keeping duration opposed to the leading heaviness. In total the search for further possibilites didn't end up too bad, and became the flawing charm of this unique release, that might be a potential favorite for the fans of death/doom.