Howl

Rhode Island doom troupe Howl's take on the genre is something unique; it's violent and ugly, but there's also heaps of potential for a bit of just-beyond-underground recognition on this debut full-length. Within seconds of opener "Horns of Steel," the production becomes the focal point, all crashing cymbals and wide-open bass drums, the vocals seemingly thrown in as an afterthought. At three-and-a-half minutes, the song is the most concise on an album, stretching its wings the more it goes on. The extended periods of time the band spend in instrumental territory, or where the instruments just overpower the vocals, make Baroness-like thoughts spring to mind. "You Jackals Beware" hints that an opening slot for Mastodon isn't out of the question, with riffs that are pure Southern progressive death, while "Gods in Broken Men" takes the intensity up a notch to that place where Buzzov*en meets, uh, pure Southern progressive death. And that main riff in "the Scorpion's Last Sting" is memorable, simple and very effective. The disc drags on a bit (the ten-minute closer might have been a bad idea), but the feeling lingers for quite some time afterwards that something very important, and intense, just happened.