Celestiial — Desolate North

Desolate North is an impressive heady, dense and mysterious forest bound mix of funeral doom, clear almost post rock guitar work, folk elements, bird and woodland sounds, and moss covered ambience. This is Celestiial first full length with a  self releashed cdr back in 2004, & for a debut it surprisingly focused and enjoyable though out.

It consist of  eight tracks in all with four moving  towards the ten minute mark & the other four around the 2 minute mark. With the shouter track having a more elegant sprightly haunted feel about them, very much weaving in a evergreen ancient forest folk vibe with tranquil use of Celtic Harp and other folky tones. The longer  tracks moving more towards an doom air, with slowly crawling riffing, dense and obsessive and often eerier layered forestall sounds, and deep down in the undergrowth guttural growls and cries. But still in even the bleakest moments there’s wonderful rich raising folk like pipes that shine like spring light on to the dark forest floor  piecing the doom here and there. Only one slight criticism some of the forest sounds in a few areas sound a little overcrowded for their own good, but this I’m sure will be ironed out in time when they become more sure of their sound craft, and hell it is there debut at the end of day.

All in all a very impressive and atmospheric ethereal woodland doom  trip, that will be of interest in those who  like the doom a little different. And a must buy for those enjoyed the recent excellent Blood of The Black owls take on forestall  black doom, which of course also came out on this very impressive newish label.