Some may argue that the
Doom Death genre is past its 15 minutes of fame. The glorious era of the early nineties with the emergence of the famed Peaceville Three seem to be the apex of the genre and now we’re either served with the most extreme side of
Doom Death, namely
Funeral Doom, or some dumbed down version of its former attire mixed with Melodeath giving birth to insipid bands like Mar de Grises or Swallow the Sun. Few keep on the real tradition of
Doom Death and even fewer do a good job at it.
It was then with mixed pleasure that I received this debut album from hybrid band
The Gardnerz. Half of the band hails from Sweden while the other half hails from Chile, a South American
Eldorado for the
Doom Metal genre.
The Gardnerz intend to play
Doom Death but rather on relying on heavy distorted guitars like
Winter or
Unholy, they pickup up a more “eerie” atmospheric sound close to
Anathema’s Pentecost III almost “Traditional
Doom” in essence on some occasions.
Mixing Traditional
Doom music with
Death Metal growls is not a new experience since the rise of Lasse Pykklo’s
Hooded Menace, who proved that the combination could be savory. Unfortunately,
The Gardnerz fail to impress like the aforementioned Finnish band did. While there is nothing absolutely bad about the
The System of Nature, it is by no means a great record.
Most songs follow basic structures and don’t give the listener too much variety. While I have nothing against the musicianship displayed here (except vocals which in my opinion are a bit too weak and uninspired), it feels as if it is played a bit too scholarly without the “
Doom” every aficionado of the genre would look for. It’s not sad, despair-inducing, it’s not grandiose or epic… it is just plain. Part of the blame is obviously some pretty generic songwriting but also most certainly due to the recording conditions. Vocals recorded in Malmo, Sweden, guitars and basses somewhere else in Sweden and drums recorded in Chile... Maybe the fact that these guys actually don't really play together kind of show up. It seems there is no real unity and, what's worse, no real passion behind this project.
Let’s just hope that their signing to a record label will allow them to actually put out on record a more memorable experience than this System of Nature. While it may obviously not qualify as worst album of the year, this would most likely be the kind of records you’d play a couple time before tiring of it and leaving to the
Dust God on your shelves… Which means that unless you’re the real die-hard fan for
Doom Death, you probably would be better off postponing this purchase.
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