Esoteric — The Maniacal Vale

The Maniacal Vale is this Uk Prog Doom metal bands firth album that see’s them weave in more post rock and expansive elements to their sound. But unfortunately to my ears it’s all rather disappointing and in the end a rather tiresome and uninspired ride.

Like the band's first two albums The Maniacal Vale  is split over two disks taking in all in one hour forty minutes worth of music. With two huge 20 minute plus tracks at either end of the album, Circle opens up the album and is a prime example of what’s wrong with the album as a whole it just rather predictable and ultimately boring -it builds, chugs goes into slow 'meant to be atmospheric' bit’s just when you expect it to. Theres no element of surprise or invention here, we’ve heard these riff (or ones very similar) many, many times before and there seems no realization of tension or cinematic build- it’s lets throw a bunch of riff’s together and hope it works. I'm  rather surprised how lifeless it all is after the  cinematic and effective dynamics of the band's keyboard player Olivier Goyet solo project Dead Beat Project album last year.

And worst of all I found my self often looking at my watch to see when they’d finally finshers off tracks and ultimately the album it’s self. Sure this is doom and the tracks should be long but to make good long tracks you to have to have some dynamics, sonic changers and hypnotic atmosphere going on  and sadly most of the tracks lack any of these important elements. They just go on and on with seemingly the interesting  and more creative elements played  briefly before going into another monotonous and predictable riff pattern.

Really I can’t recall an album that dragged badly in such a manner before this is Prog/ post rock/doom at it’s most predictable, dull and tiresome. To be honest I would rather watch paint dry than have to sit through this again.