Ahab Go Back into the Deep
It was by only the slightest beard hair that I avoided hearing the nautically-bent Ahab when they made their debut with 2006’s Call of the Wretched Sea. It wasn’t that I had something against the German funeral doom four-piece, just that I knew once I exposed myself to the record (hello!), I’d have to buy it. And we couldn’t have that, right? It stayed on my Amazon wish list for a while as I waited for the price to drop, but it never did, so I took it off and that seemed to be that on Ahab.
Until I heard The Divinity of Oceans, Ahab‘s new, second album through Napalm Records. Now I’m in the hole for two of the band’s releases and wondering why I bothered to resist in the first place. The band hone their watery craft across seven lengthy tracks — the shortest is “O Father Sea” at 7:07 — of snail’s pace riffing and deathly growls. Sporadic melodic vocals pop up in various moans and croons throughout, as on closer “Nickerson’s Theme,” and the guitars late into “Tombstone Carousal” are almost hopeful sounding, but the compass is pointing to oppressive doom lethargy, and Ahab are clearly skilled navigators.
The oceanic elements of The Divinity of Oceans are almost entirely lyrical. One could make the argument that some of the soft/heavy switches are meant to symbolize a sudden weather shift or wave pattern, but they could just as easily not, and as such, it’s in reading the words (and a read is required unless you have a particular gift for deciphering death growls) that the central being of the album is revealed. Where Call of the Wretched Sea was specifically geared to Moby Dick as a concept, the band digs deeper this time into the water-logged literary canon with Nathaniel Philbrick‘s In the Heart of the Sea and Owen Chase‘s classic, The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex, presenting their inspiration in shanties, prayers to nature and cannibalistic regret.
Initially viewed as a side-project for guitarist Chris Hector and guitarist/vocalist Daniel Droste, whose main outfit is the band Midnattsol, Ahab stands wholly apart from the double-ladied melodic/semi-goth metallers, and The Divinity of Oceans is an album as dark and foreboding as a lamp-lit sea voyage into uncharted waters. Musically, it doesn’t deviate from the genre norms as put in place by the likes of Norway‘s Funeral or Finland‘s Thergothon, but by coupling a familiar and weighty plod with the specifically nautical context, Hector, Droste, bassist Stephan Wandernoth and drummer Cornelius “Corny” Althammer have managed to find a niche that puts them beyond the realms of the forgettable and/or generic. Just be warned: if you’re going to go out on a limb and listen to The Divinity of Oceans, be prepared to throw down some extra cash for the first record too if you haven’t already.
Tags: Ahab, funeral doom, Germany, Napalm Records
