As The Howling Void's debut release, it is remarkably focused and controlled. It’s the sound of the Lord of the Flies summoning down his sheeting rains. Funeral doom, a niche splinter of the '90s black metal implosion, appeals when deftly executed. When it isn't, it is stifling boredom. There's a mysterious line between a fugue-state and a snore.
The Howling Void is a guy named Ryan from San Antonio. He's listed as "Everything" under instrumentalist credit. Megaliths of the Abyss sounds great, though a trained ear will hear the noise-gate flapping when Ryan punched in his vocals and guitars. Its technical raggedness might break the spell for a studio nerd. For most, it’s unnoticeable.
Otherwise, Ryan impeccably layered keyboards and guitars together into somber canyons of sorrow. He slid his demonic growl in and out, eased stealthy piano plinks under the carpet and used the drumbeat as a once a minute reminder that he fashioned a sonic picture of mourners in black marching in black slow steps beneath canopies of black umbrellas down a black path to a remote corner of a graveyard, where sits a black casket awaiting its lowering into the black earthly abyss.
The album has four tracks, one ironically entitled "Mollusk," which dovetail together into a contemplation on the fundamental tragedy of life. Megaliths of the Abyss is a suite to the ritual of final farewell. In selected kabobs, it would've tracked magnificently behind a classic Italian horror flick. It's easy to understand its cult status, though it trips into the grave striving for the ultimate emotional connection that it might have found if the graveyard mists weren't so dense.
The best of breed finds ways to hook the listener's heart and drag it into the center of the experience, even if that experience is suffocating sadness. The Howling Void and Megaliths of the Abyss may not make the listener sob and wretch, but neither will it reaffirm life. It is an expression of funeral doom, and a well-realized one. Now will someone pass that bowl of Prozac over this way?
(released February 14, 2012 by Metalhit.com)
