Horse Latitudes - Black Soil (2013)

   After the wider success of drone metal, plenty of bands tried themselves in the new style. Though it's kinda debatable if it was able to show anything new, but it was a new aspect of musical minimalism for sure. In more fortunate occasions, new bands didn't came with another noise based rehearsal sound check experiment, but embedded drone sound into their selected style, that was most commonly doom metal. Usually those bands survived longer who also changed their style step by step, trying further possibilities, and these experiments often led to something impressive (like in case of Conan or Dead Rooster for instance). And Horse Latitudes were no exception either, they gave a new, immeasurably dark tone to doom metal.

   On their first two albums they have been committed to the classic features of doom by occult topics, high singing, and extending their songs to funeral doom length and intensity - or to be more specific, by the lack of intensity. The classic sound of doom metal was completed with drone features, represented by the distorted sound of bass, therefore bass lines had highlighted role. On "Black Soil" the band went further both in influences and obscureness. Growling vocals appeared on the side of clear singing, the bass sounded way more ominous and threatening than before. The song structures were advantageous to highlight the dark and heavy switches that are eventually occuring on the album. Intensity also showed up occasionally like never before. Sometimes by middle tempo with heaviness that could be comparable to death metal, and even by high tempo, that recalled the sound of black metal. In total both the darker tone and the wider diversity in themes turned out to be pretty effective, and on the side of higher enjoyability, this mixed form led to something extremely obscure, depressing and sick, that couldn't be heard often on similar level. "Black Soil" is strongly recommended for the fans of doom metal and funeral doom!