Great Coven “Viaticum” CD

"Viaticum" was the sole release from Spain's Great Coven—originally self-released as a CD-R by the band in 2004, and properly re-released on CD last year by the mighty I Hate. The band seemed to live by the creed that "doom and sorrow are the only ways", which should give you a pretty clear indication as to their sound, which was driven—unsurprisingly—by relatively slow, pounding tempos, crunchy downtuned riffing, and plenty of darkness. Now, I'm not gonna lie, while I do dig this genre, I really haven't listened to but so much of this type of thing over the years, and in the last five years or so I've been especially unaware of what's going on out there with regard to this niche, so... I'm certainly no authority. These cats seem to have had their own kind of thing going on, though. That's not to say they were entirely "original" (not that any band is in this day and age), as with damn near every single band operating in this realm they wore some of their influences on their sleeves, but there are just enough atypical elements at work to add some distinction. For one thing, the vocals are a little different from the norm—neither particularly aggressive nor monotone, but not wholly "sung" either—and there are also some really cool solos and surging rhythms that add a little twist to the straight up sludgy power chords often employed. They didn't really venture into too much of that fuzzy kind of rocked out 70's stuff either, which is fine by me, so... it's not as pummelingly heavy as what I tend to associate with "doom", but it's definitely much heavier and more sinister than that whole "stoner rock" realm (and I fucking hate that term, for the record). Almost every track hovers right between five and six minutes, making for nearly an hour's worth (and yeah, that can test your limits a bit) of "doom and sorrow" when all is said and done, so... hey, whatever you want to call it, it's solid material that was pushing the boundaries a little bit. It's never a bad thing when a record can't be pigeonholed into one tidy little corner of a genre, you know? Not bad at all...

Great Coven "Reign of Thorns"
Great Coven "Viaticum"

As always, make the grab if this is your thing:

The End Records