Not so with Ov Hollowness, the solo project of Canadian musician Mark R. who, after 2010’s self-released ‘Diminished’ debut and 2011’s ‘Drawn to Descend’ follower on Hypnotic Dirge, very recently unleashed his third album on Italy’s code666 label. That isn’t to say the music on ‘The World Ends’ is all flowers and sunshine, of course, but if the atmospheric black metal tag it is being advertised under led you to expect this to be your typical back-to-nature tremolo-picking affair, you’re in for a surprise.

For all the black metal ingredients used in the making of this album, most notably in the vocal department, what we have here is much more of a doom opus clothed in black metal garb. If a fair portion of the songs do speed along at a fairly quick pace (‘An End’, ‘Grey’) and score high enough on the necro-meter, most of them seem bent on conveying the forlorn feelings and general sense of gloom that are more typical of Northern England’s climes than the mighty fjords of Norway. And while you’d be hard-pressed to find a sub-genre of the extreme metal family that hasn’t, over the last fifteen years or so, been contaminated somehow by Norway’s most famous export this side of reindeer pâté, the Edmonton-based musician doesn’t take great pain to conceal he grew up on Paradise Lost and assorted miserabilists instead.

This is not only evidenced by the crunchy guitar sound utilised throughout or the recurrent use of clean vocals and overtly melodic choruses, but also by the man’s recourse to fluid soli lifted straight from the Greg Mackintosh rule-book (‘Hoarfrost’ is pure PL worship for the first two minutes) as well as the kind of clean production that would have Fenriz throw his arms in the air. Here, though, it proves all but necessary to allow the instruments to breathe and the compositions, most of which clock in at more than six minutes, to fully develop. The fact that the bass constitutes a fully-fledged component of Ov Hollowness’ sound and is not simply buried in the mix is, as such, telling enough.

At nearly 75 minutes and despite the fairly predictable construction of most of its tracks (let us not mention the fairly harmless dark ambient outro that closes the proceedings), ‘The World Ends’ is an album that will take some time to sink in and while it can hardly be described as prog-ish by any stretch of the imagination, some of the most daring passages manage to evoke the ghost of second-period Enslaved, which should at least help the album outlive a couple of curious spins.

The schizophrenic nature of Ov Hollowness’ music and the general absence of vitriol will no doubt have the forest-dwelling kvltists shrug their shoulders in disbelief, and it may be feared that fans of the Yorkshire sound will find this too coarse for their tastes but the strength and general cohesiveness of the compositions is clearly the best advocate of the band so if it’s songs you’re after and not merely an atmosphere, you may very well find this a worthy addition to your collection.