SUUM – Cryptomass (Not Total Ass Italian Doom)
Okay Italy, okay, there is hope, after all. In case you missed it, which I know you did, I’ve been ripping on Italian doom metal over the past couple years because pretty much any submission I’ve gotten from the country in said genre has been total ass. The primary reason is this strange tendency to focus on a much older sound that hearkens back to the days when doom was just called hard rock or something. This is often a feature of the current times, but the issue with the Italian vein of it, as I’ve seen, is it’s rarely able to come to terms with modernity. SUUM have taken up that challenge to not be ass and defeated me with Cryptomass.
Perhaps the primary reason SUUM is so successful with their approach is that the vocals just get it. Mark Wolf has to have formal training, or if not he was born with the perfect throat for this kind of sound. His words carry like chants and lonely laments in a cathedral, which is exactly what this type of doom requires. Beyond that, Cryptomass has a slow, purposeful step. The riffs need not impress with complexity, they dwell more in remoteness, making for a surprisingly successful combination of the olden days with youthful echoes of the modern. Toss in some unpretentious solo work, and you’ve got some old school doom perfection that avoids the usual ass foolery that turns me off to most of it.
Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls
SUUM – Cryptomass
Seeing Red Records
Cover Art: Antonio Painkiller
4.5 / 5
