Review Summary: Divine Finnish melancholic gothic doom
Counting Hours’ debut “The Will” (now unfathomably) didn’t click on first spins. For some reason I clearly remember the do or die listen and at the end it survived my weekly cull. On subsequent listens, “The Will” proved to be fresh and inspired gothic melodic death doom with each song having a catch. It can at times be something as unassuming as the drumming which it enhances my affection for it no end.
The main catch or appeal of new record “The Wishing Tomb”, let’s face it, is the melancholic melodies. The mood setter opener, “Unsung, Forlorn”, takes me back to that make-or-break moment when I nearly dismissed the band and I smile. “Timeless Ones” continues their signature sound of clean guitars buoyed by Ilpo Paasela’s beautiful singing that I point to recent Katatonia as a reference point. Another catch in Counting Hours music is the ol’ death growls to keep it real. This dichotomy is on display with cleans featuring in the rousing climax “Shine Afar! We’re the timeless ones”.
As evidenced in “Away I Flow”, this is the purring of a very confident band with members having experience in other groups, least not the guitarists from the legendary Rapture, and exposure to the Finnish scene that is seemingly always buzzing with collaboration and creativity. It’s a scene where melodic death doom is home and song titles like “All That Blooms (Needs to Die)” aren’t cause to blink an eyelid. Other reference points are fellow Finns Hanging Garden, Marianas Rest and Before the Dawn, who can equally pen a strikingly emotive tune. To hear the lyric “It haunts from inside, and it will follow us” sung in pitch perfect tones gives “All That Blooms (Needs to Die)” the juxtaposition it seeks to prove this point.
The drumming certainly enhances my appreciation of “Starlit / Lifeless” with its rotating tempo of speeds both tempered and dynamic, serving well its mournful sentiment. The gentle acoustic lapping of the title track belies its ensuing directness and darkness with the familiar union of double bass drums and layers of guitars. The shadowed riffs work seamlessly with the vocals, inconspicuously shifting to tremolo picking and fading like a ship departing.
Truth be told both vocal styles are much easier on the ear than other similar ventures. Also a cut above is the consistency across each of the songs which respectively possess a curly hook at the start or end of a song that’s key to listener engagement and lends ultimately to the flow of the record. “A Mercy Fall” especially is cleverly positioned as the penultimate track owing to its retrospective feel and you can feel the album start to wind up.
But these Counting Hours are nowhere near done as this amounts to a second tale in a trilogy. As in many ways this is a sequel to “The Will”, including the album art which appears to be further down track of the forest in The Will’s art. Similarly in the open melodies and pacing of the songs with the same members and production team. And finally in the closer “This Well of Failures” which has the charming despondency of the former’s “Among the Pines We’ll Die”. They’re on a roll Counting Hours no two ways about it.
