Pilgrim-Misery Wizard

Metal Blade

2012

This is the debut from this Rhode Island based trio. As you have probably already guessed from the cover and album title this is doom metal. The riffs come slowly on winding their way along. The influences are obvious as they include such legends of the field as Candlemass, Reverand Bizarre and Saint Vitus. So with influences like that then this must be good, right? Well, not exactly. The ideas are in the right place, but as I have witnessed before there is more to being good at playing doom then just being slow. That can be a promising start, but if you don't have a strong dierection to head in then solid doom can become boring. Unfortunately that's where this band lost me on several songs and that's where they differ from the masters of this style. They began their songs with promise, but but two minutes turned into three and then four or more with not much variation. While their riffs were decent they were not the kind of twisting, sick variety that could keep my attention under this kind of steady repitition. I went into this album hoping to like it even wanting to like it. They have some potential, but lack the ideas to really fill out their songs. Hopefully they keep the feeling of what they have, but push ahead a lot more for the next album.