Surtr, Pulvis et Umbra: The Doom of the Doomed… Also, Doom
Some harsher vocals from guitarist Jeff Maurer add a darker, metallic edge to the proceedings, but at its heart, French trio Surtr‘s second album, Pulvis et Umbra, is traditional doom all the way. Whether you run it back to Saint Vitus and The Obsessed or Count Raven and Reverend Bizarre, it rounds out to the same downward spiral of riffs and misery. That seems just fine by the Lorraine outfit, who release the album on Altsphere Production as the follow-up to 2011’s World of Doom debut, as the material shows no real ambition to transcend beyond the occasional flash of early Viking metal (read: Bathory) influence on a song like “Three Winters of War” in its reaching past genre, and the band are decently suited to their style. Production throughout is clear but largely flat and shifts in tempo offer little change from the mood, which is as dreary as one might expect across the seven-track/42-minute full-length, and while perhaps unremarkable in offering a groundbreaking take on doom, Pulvis et Umbra — the title translating from the Latin to “Ashes and Dust” — stands as an able execution of genre and a cohesive release nonetheless. It ain’t gonna change the world, but as doom for doomers, one could probably find bands with much less to offer than Surtr, depending on how deep into the mire one wanted to look.
The album begins with “Rise Again,” organ holding a melody line under Maurer‘s guitar, Julien Kuhn‘s bass and Régis Beck‘s drums initially but seeming to fade away once the slow crawl of the track’s central progression is introduced. Straightforward through and through, Maurer has a traditional metal inflection to his cleaner singing that’s instantly familiar as “Rise Again” plays out, Kuhn offering a few engaging fills in the open spaces left by the guitar. Gradually, they solidify to a forward thrust, but it’s not until the final minute that they really pick up the pace and Maurer reveals a screaming approach that’s soon layered with growls underneath to varying success, capping with barks of “Rise! Rise!” to act as an apex before the Viking-style drum thud of “Three Winters of War” sets the tone for the riff before dropping out to make way for it. This time it’s the verse that’s more active and the chorus that slows down. Fine. Maurer‘s voice reminds a bit of Slough Feg‘s latter day incantations, but without the Celt-folk idiosyncrasies, keeping the melody in line with Kuhn‘s able basslines, which actually wind up providing most of the character the band shows throughout. That’s not to take anything away from Beck or Maurer‘s performances, they’re just more straightforward, and even when “Three Winters of War” shifts into its Cathedral-style ending progression, there’s no sense of flourish to be found from either of them.
But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now: If you can’t get down with slow and/or repetitive riffs, you probably shouldn’t be listening to doom. “Sonic Doom” has a little shuffle in its midsection — again, most distinguished by Kuhn, though Beck elicits a bit of cacophony as well — and Maurer‘s blackened screams of the title seem a little overboard, but the spirit is there and I won’t fault the band that. They break into a creepier, quieter section before going back into the final chorus that’s actually my favorite part of the album, but it’s shortlived and their shortest track (4:49) ultimately winds up working best as a setup for the CD centerpiece, “The Call,” which takes Iommi riffing and a sense of Pagan Altar dungeon-dwelling successfully to darker reaches, keys returning in the midsection bridge and departing again before the chug of the second half of of the song opens to more ambient floating guitar lines from Maurer, whose vocals also seem more natural in the final lines of “The Call” and the opening groove of “Rebellion,” which adds some bell sounds to mark out riff cycles in its chorus in addition to synth melody that’s somewhat buried but still an appreciated touch. The shift from verse to chorus in “Rebellion” is made somewhat jagged the second time around owing to the sudden resurgence of synth, but when they jump from that chorus to the ensuing guitar solo, they seem to be more in their element, and Maurer‘s classic metal chug and punctuated riffing start the final third with a return to the verse and final chorus that precede a big slowdown and fadeout crash.
More extreme growls return and add personality to “I am the Cross” amid start-stop riffing and more low end righteousness, the song starting out slow and mostly staying that way even as the marching chorus finds lead notes played out over the rhythm track and the semi-chanted vocals before the next verse gives way to an increase in pace and a faster mostly-instrumental finish — Maurer taking a solo along the way for good measure before a last chorus and scream lead to the final chugging of Pulvis et Umbra‘s penultimate track, the final stretch of which is the most satisfying, guitars and synth (or what sounds like synth, anyway; no one’s credited with keys on the album) working in tandem toward a singular, melancholic idea. Surtr finish with “Fred Karno’s Army,” making a memorable hook of the title line over the course of the eight-plus minutes to cap with a final push of extremity, Beck adding some double-kick and Maurer‘s emitting a triumphant riff while Primordial-style spoken vocals lead to a last minute of swirl, noise, steady drums and bass and finally release of all of the above while the guitar and hi-hat end the record. Surprises are few and far between, but for effective moments like the finale of “Fred Karno’s Army” and the fistpump-ready metallurgy of “The Call,” Pulvis et Umbra leaves a firm doomly impression when it’s over. Like Surtr‘s debut, it’s an album by doomers for doomers, but the band is beginning to show signs of forming their own approach within the genre, and in doing so, highlighting a burgeoning agency in their songwriting.
To be fair, it is a pretty cool door.