{"id":21969,"date":"2014-10-13T00:01:36","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T00:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=21969"},"modified":"2014-10-13T16:22:11","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T16:22:11","slug":"album-review-occultation-silence-in-the-ancestral-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-occultation-silence-in-the-ancestral-house\/","title":{"rendered":"OCCULTATION – Silence In The Ancestral House (2014) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

OCCULTATION
Silence In The Ancestral House<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nInvictus Productions (2014)<\/span>
Rating: 6.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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With its genuinely creepy introduction, Silence In The Ancestral House<\/em> emerges from the shadows and signals the return of New York trio Occultation. <\/p>\n

Two years previous, messrs Viveca Butler (vocals \/ drums), E. Miller (guitar \/ organ \/ vocals) and Annu Lilja (bass \/ vocals) released their murky 2012 debut album Three & Seven<\/em> which impressed me greatly with its creaking joints and oaken doom metal charade. It\u2019s no surprise then that these guys have continued ploughing similar furrows for Satan. This new opus boasts nine tracks which nod to the Gothic drama of King Diamond and Ghost B.C., but also in the doom-laden sense bands such as Candlemass. <\/p>\n

The problem, however, is that a majority of contemporary bands of this ilk who are influenced by the occult seem to lack the one detail that made bands such as Candlemass and King Diamond so good, and that\u2019s weight. I personally think that Ghost B.C. is one of the most overrated bands of the modern era \u2013 bolstered only by their ghoulish fa\u00e7ade \u2013 but the reality is while esoteric rock is very much in vogue, pretty much every artist within the field seems to not only be bereft of weight but originality too. Occultation slips into the same category, because while there are some truly eerie moments on this sophomore effort, it boasts a sound you\u2019ll feel as if you\u2019ve heard so many times before and everything about this is just so tepid.<\/p>\n

Once the brief introduction is through, we\u2019re swept away by the foggy nuances of \u2018The First Of The Last\u2019 which begins with a promising, doom-laden chug, only to forget itself rather quickly and loiter in that watery Ghost B.C. realm where ghostly atmosphere believes it can take precedence over musical quality, but in this case it just doesn\u2019t work. <\/p>\n

In spite of the dreamy female vocal wisps \u2013 which sadly seem to litter every bloody occult rock opus nowadays \u2013 there is an element of the basic with Occultation, who drifts aimlessly in that clogging sea already inhabited by the likes of the equally lukewarm The Oath and Bloody Hammers, alongside the more innovative of acts such as Purson. <\/p>\n

Where do we go from here with this occult rock malarkey? \u2018Laughter In The Halls Of Madness\u2019 once again boasts that ghoulish-a-go-go strain where uptempo doom rock meets late 60s garage-psyche nostalgia; a void where spectral moans float over misty graveyards and fiendish riffs speak of loitering menace. There are hunts of New Wave and Goth too, more so in, again, \u2018Laughter In The Halls Of Madness\u2019, while the horrified strains of the dramatic \u2018All Hallow\u2019s Fire\u2019 now seem commonplace within the extreme metal genre.<\/p>\n

I actually like this album for what it is \u2013 a brooding slab of simplistic doom metal \u2013 but I just feel that there is something missing with this current, popular trend. I can certainly understand why Black Sabbath<\/a> influences just about everyone within the metal genre, but to hear so many bands \u2013 especially those with female vocals \u2013 opting for a similar sound is rather worrying, because it doesn\u2019t matter how much I enjoy the spooky echoes of \u2018The Dream Tide\u2019, I\u2019m just left feeling so darn unfulfilled that only a night spent in the shadows of a crooked tombstone in the local churchyard will fully appease my hunger.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OCCULTATIONSilence In The Ancestral House Invictus Productions (2014)Rating: 6.5\/10 With its genuinely creepy introduction, Silence In The Ancestral House emerges from the shadows and signals the return of New York trio Occultation. Two years previous, messrs Viveca Butler (vocals \/ drums), E. Miller (guitar \/ organ \/ vocals) and Annu Lilja (bass \/ vocals) released […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1465],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-occultation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21969"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21973,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21969\/revisions\/21973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}