I have a special respect for bands who self release albums. It’s hard enough to hone your craft as musicians without having to also navigate the business of getting your work out into the world. I myself understand what a bitch the nuts and bolts of self promotion can be. I’m a visual artist who has never had gallery representation—I’ve shown in galleries, which is not the same—and I also run a small artist book publishing imprint. I imagine it’s similar for bands without a label. Reading the promo we received for Dutch doom band Treurwilg’s second album An End to Rumination, their workman-like approach is obvious. It’s short on the flowery exaggerations about world-ending brutality and breathtaking innovation you see from label PR guys and long on details of how they started, who they’ve shared the stage with and the work they’ve put in. They state proudly that An End to Rumination was “recorded live in the studio, with minimal overdubs and no studio magic.” Of course this respect for their energy and dedication doesn’t change my job as a reviewer—I judge artistry, not work ethic1—but I want to give a special shout out to the unsigned bands that stick their necks out by sending us their work before I get to the senseless beating, er, review.
Treurwilg draws from different doom metal traditions, particularly the strange bedfellows of post-metal and funeral doom. If Isis and Ahab were shipmates on an Oceanic journey, they’d make something like An End to Rumination. Other than the opening track, which I’ll discuss later, this sound is consistent throughout. “In Ruin and Misery” demonstrates the formula with a clean, atmospheric guitar intro leading into a big, simple but emotional riff that repeats late in the song. Clean atmospherics and crawling funeral doom with deep guttural vocals take turns through the midsection. At 12 minutes, it’s the longest song, with the final 45 seconds or so a wash of soothing synths that appear on later tracks as well.
The strength of Treurwilg lies in how well they meld those atmospheric post-metal passages with the funerary pacing and vocals. The funerophile in me enjoys the latter in particular, as the band knows how to keep the crawling tempos engaging. “In Ruin and Misery” strikes the balance well, as does “Myosotis,” which adds to the mix an emotive guitar lead that wouldn’t be out of place on a Pallbearer album. It’s the best song on the platter aside from vocalist Rens van Herpt’s odd, affected drawl in the song’s first half. This is the only glaring issue in his otherwise grim vocal performance.
Other missteps are harder to overlook. The choice to put “The Fragility of Mankind” first, for instance. It’s easily the shortest track, and while it does display some of the doomy elements found later on, it’s a mostly vanilla mid-to-up-tempo affair that in no way plays to the band’s strengths. More egregious is the production job. As mentioned above, An End to Rumination was recorded live with minimal overdubs. Unfortunately this means that when drummer Mitchell Scheerder really cuts loose, his kit completely swallows all other sounds on the record. The result is a wall of cymbal crashes that pulsate with an unintended distortion taking up the majority of the song. This recurs briefly on “In Ruin and Misery,” but thankfully nowhere else.
“The Fragility of Mankind” aside, each of the other songs are either quite good or at least have enjoyable elements, but there’s one more blemish dragging An End to Rumination down. Spoken word passages at the beginning, middle and end of the album earnestly pontificate about the importance of facing one’s fears. It’s cornball, Fisher Price My First Self Awareness™ type stuff that makes me cringe each time I hear it. If you’re a metal band thinking about adding this kind of thing to your album, just know that it almost never comes off as cool, bad-ass or deep as you think it does. This, along with a couple other questionable choices, means that while Treurwilg show some decent, doomy potential, this album won’t be cracking my listening rotation.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: treurwilg.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/treurwilgdoom
Releases Worldwide: February 22nd, 2020
