Gallileous - Equideus
Gallileus are a funeral doom metal band from Poland who create mounrful tunes with plenty of conviction and no crushing fuzziness. The music is bleak, but not as bleak as some funeral doom bands are such as EA or Somnolent. One can still retain a slight sense of sanity while hearing Gallileus's style. While this may be an EP, the fact it is a lengthy EP could have allowed the band to make another full length album. Basically, it's two new tracks, a retrack of an older demo, a cover, and a cleaner remix of an earlier song. Altogether though, it's certainly a lengthy cohesion of funeral doom.
The opening track grants the softest side of the band fans will probably ever hear as the lush acoustic guitars lead the way; no crushing feeling yet. The music sounds placid, nothing like what one would expect from fueral doom. However, soon distorted waves come in and the music becomes electrified with reverb and listeners can soon feel the weight of the music. It's the shortest track on the album before exploding into the longer "Equideus," which sounds a lot more like funeral doom. The drumming is slow, and simple. There's a backing piano to create a haunting atmosphere and the guitars and bass plug away in a brain dead, sometimes ugly fashion. Yet, the music still seems clean and not too distorted... until the vocals come in. Waves of growls and snarls hit the earhole and suddenly everything is shaken and fans will understand why Gallileus is called funeral doom. The following track makes heavier use of the funeral-like piano and lays a bit off the crushing atmosphere by letting the guitars plink away with some downtuned notes instead of just full on chords, but they hammer away every once in a while when the vocals make their appearance. There's even a solo, which is rare in funeral doom metal (unless the entire thing is a solo).
The re-tracking of "Holy Grail" follows a very similar fashion to how the first track sounded: lots of guitar, either in a crushing fashion broken up by single, melodic lines, combined with vocals that sound a bit more raw and more black metal inspired than the deeper funeral doom growls already heard. The piano is clear and there's even what sounds to be some choir, which really brings out the 'funeral' aspect. The Rotting Christ cover is a great addition because Gallileus try to focus on bringing out the gothic elements of the track (for those that don't know, Rotting Christ are a heavy gothic black metal band) and the tribute is a great, slowed down version of the original. The guitars sound even more mournful, and the vocals even try to perform a sort of black metal screech along with cleaner vocals. It's interesting because Rotting Christ's style suits Gallileus well as the two are similar, just one is less crushing than the other. Finally, the remix of "Revenge" is not much different from the first, except the production sounds a little more static-laden in white noise rather than the crushing distortion, and there's an organ keyboard to really bring out the atmosphere.
Like all funeral doom, Gallileus may get monotonous after some time (many of the tracks are over five minutes). But, the group aims for more than just creating crushing wave after wave of music. They try to put some tone in their music that is at times mournful and other times beautiful, and with this EP, do a good job at restructuring older songs for 2009 and covering one of the better black metal bands in the metal worlds. Certainly worth checking out.
The opening track grants the softest side of the band fans will probably ever hear as the lush acoustic guitars lead the way; no crushing feeling yet. The music sounds placid, nothing like what one would expect from fueral doom. However, soon distorted waves come in and the music becomes electrified with reverb and listeners can soon feel the weight of the music. It's the shortest track on the album before exploding into the longer "Equideus," which sounds a lot more like funeral doom. The drumming is slow, and simple. There's a backing piano to create a haunting atmosphere and the guitars and bass plug away in a brain dead, sometimes ugly fashion. Yet, the music still seems clean and not too distorted... until the vocals come in. Waves of growls and snarls hit the earhole and suddenly everything is shaken and fans will understand why Gallileus is called funeral doom. The following track makes heavier use of the funeral-like piano and lays a bit off the crushing atmosphere by letting the guitars plink away with some downtuned notes instead of just full on chords, but they hammer away every once in a while when the vocals make their appearance. There's even a solo, which is rare in funeral doom metal (unless the entire thing is a solo).
The re-tracking of "Holy Grail" follows a very similar fashion to how the first track sounded: lots of guitar, either in a crushing fashion broken up by single, melodic lines, combined with vocals that sound a bit more raw and more black metal inspired than the deeper funeral doom growls already heard. The piano is clear and there's even what sounds to be some choir, which really brings out the 'funeral' aspect. The Rotting Christ cover is a great addition because Gallileus try to focus on bringing out the gothic elements of the track (for those that don't know, Rotting Christ are a heavy gothic black metal band) and the tribute is a great, slowed down version of the original. The guitars sound even more mournful, and the vocals even try to perform a sort of black metal screech along with cleaner vocals. It's interesting because Rotting Christ's style suits Gallileus well as the two are similar, just one is less crushing than the other. Finally, the remix of "Revenge" is not much different from the first, except the production sounds a little more static-laden in white noise rather than the crushing distortion, and there's an organ keyboard to really bring out the atmosphere.
Like all funeral doom, Gallileus may get monotonous after some time (many of the tracks are over five minutes). But, the group aims for more than just creating crushing wave after wave of music. They try to put some tone in their music that is at times mournful and other times beautiful, and with this EP, do a good job at restructuring older songs for 2009 and covering one of the better black metal bands in the metal worlds. Certainly worth checking out.
- Arias Paganus
- Equideus
- Sun's Crypt
- Unholy Grail
- The Fourth Knight Of Revelation (cover Rotting Christ)
- I'll Revenge (2009 remix)
Redrum666 Records
Reviewer: Colin McNamara
May 27, 2010
May 27, 2010
Next review:
Morbid Carnage - Night Assassins
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