DLP Review: "Devoured" by Amarok

Devoured

Last year I finally read Shogun by James Clavell.

Folks who are about my age may recall the mini-series TV event, but won't remember it terribly well without having revisited it.

It's hard to believe, as a card carrying otaku, that I hadn't read this novel or seen the mini-series, but here we are.

The novel is based around a Englishman who sailed from the Netherlands to South America and then on to, as they called them, The Japans.

It's hard to conceptualize their voyage in our highly connected age. These men climbed aboard sailing vessels armed only with incomplete maps and sextants. In those days, sea travel was perilous. Most of the men who set off on that voyage died.

Amarok

Many of them were killed in gun battles with the Portuguese, but several of them fell overboard.

Just try to picture that.

That's the feeling Amarok's debut album gives me.

The music is slow and thick. It's somewhat overwhelming.

The vocals sound like a man who's getting ready to breathe his last. There's pain and terror sprinkled all about.

There are only four tracks on this mammoth debut.  Four tracks of pain, suffering, and eventual death. This collection is dark enough to send a man into an existential crisis.

The first two songs clock in at over twenty minutes each. Time slows down as the guitars and drums interlock to create an ocean of agony.

To say the songs are progressive and a touch long would be an understatement. This collection is nearly seventy minutes length.

This is quite a large mouthful. It's hard to avoid being swallowed by it, but that's what makes it so powerful.

Release: 6/22/18
Genre: Doom/Sludge
Label: Translation Loss
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