Review Summary: Drenched in dread and foreboding, The Great Old Ones offer up a worthy tribute to H.P. Lovecraft
One of the greatest and most important horror writers of all time, H.P Lovecraft’s influence on not only literature, but music too, cannot be underestimated. To this day there are hordes of bands who use his unique and astoundingly creative style of fiction to fuel their own subject matter, and where many bands fail in trying to capture the gritty essence of Lovecraft’s writing, French outfit The Great Old Ones largely succeed.
Simply put, the five-piece don’t settle for simplicity; each song presented on their third full length ‘EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy’ is extremely ambitious in scope, with even the relatively ephemeral ‘When the Stars Align’ meandering through various dynamic shifts throughout its five minute runtime. Sonically, the band doesn't stray too far from the black metal blueprint, with plenty of blast beats and tremolo-picked riffs littered throughout, but the record’s main strength is simply how well these passages are written. For example, the utterly thunderous riff around five minutes into ‘The Ritual’ sees the band display their technical proficiency to devastating effect, the combination of furious blast beats and tremolo picking conveying a sense of urgency carefully balanced with tight cohesion.
The album’s highlight undoubtedly comes in the form of ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, a definite contender for black metal song of the year. Perfectly-executed tempo changes, a sprawling song-structure and wretched harsh vocals courtesy of Benjamin Guerry build an atmosphere so dense with terror that it appears to be the perfect manifestation of Lovecraft’s similarly macabre fiction.
Unfortunately the risk that The Great Old Ones takes by writing such ambitious tracks doesn’t always pay off. The rest of the album doesn’t seem to reflect the same consistency as ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, with songs like the aforementioned ‘When the Stars Align’ and ‘In Screams and Flames’ perhaps feeling a tad unfocused in places. A large part of this lies in the muddy production style as the three guitarists frequently bleed into each other to create an occasionally-indecipherable wall of sound. Consequently there are significant sections of the album which feel as if they’re going through the motions, perhaps lacking the driven intensity of songs like ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ and the fittingly dramatic closer, ‘Mare Infinitum’.
Despite this it's refreshing to hear an album that, for the most part, sounds like a worthy tribute to someone as celebrated as Lovecraft. It’s a shame that The Great Old Ones appear to lack the consistency of some of their contemporaries, because there are moments on this album that are worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as even the most acclaimed black metal bands. That said, ‘EOD’ ultimately marks a solid addition to the band’s discography, and will no doubt go down as one of 2017’s most ambitious and atmospheric metal records.
