Originally written by Jon Eardley
Novembers Doom has obviously been paying attention to the ass whooping the Finns have been bestowing upon the doom/death genre and metal masses in recent years, and they aren’t gonna sit around any longer and let that slide without sending out a message of their own. Studio album number six, entitled The Novella Reservoir, is an impressively strong statement showing this band has finally come into their own and will not go down without a fight.
While the band’s mission to create dark n’ gloomy doom/death has stayed fairly consistent throughout the past few albums, it’s this album that will perk up more ears than ever before for these talented Chicago natives. The album jumps out of the gate with the very energetic “Rain” and leaves a cloud of dust in its wake. Two things are immediately evident – this band has never sounded better production-wise, and they’ve upped the ante in the songwriting department. By bringing a more urgent pace coupled with bone crushing riffage to the songs “Drown the Inland Mire”, “The Voice of Failure” and “Dominate the Human Strain”, the band shows that they have a more complex and blistering side to their sound, as each track fleshes out an ominous and energetic fury that has been hidden for far too long. The acoustically driven “Twilight of Innocence” gleams with beauty and shows a vocal performance that, while some of the lyrics are of a more sensitive nature, personifies a confident release of emotion in its delivery. The near ballad-esque closer, aptly named “Leaving This”, soothes with an anthem-like chorus and ending that will have you humming it even after the song has ended. Great vocals that go from growls of deepened and darkened girth, to very well thought out cleanly melodic passages that flourish with assurance and self-belief litter the album. The title track and “They Were Left to Die” are more consistent with what has been heard on the previous couple of albums, but both are more structured and more aggressive in nature, yet contain a much sloooowwwer and brooding gait the band has always been know for. All in all Novembers Doom has finally written an album that ebbs and flows with an extremely strong listenable factor from front to back.
In conclusion, doom/death metal fans can’t go wrong with this record, and it is abso-fucking-lutely worth your time and cash. Fans of the band will be more than pleased, and folks who have heard past material but weren’t sold might be pleasantly surprised as well. Novembers Doom has found an impressive stride with this record, and have released an album that will be seen on some year end lists, there’s no doubting that. It’s definitely an early contender to make mine.
