Abominable Iron Sloth, The
The Id Will Overcome
Reviewed By Michael O'Brien
Published 04/07/2010
A lot of promise but only a little delivery
For about as long as I’ve been into metal I’ve had a soft spot for the Southern sludge sound but it’s only been relatively recently that I’ve developed a taste and appreciation for the more extreme sludge/doom sound of bands like Eyehategod (yes, I’m very late to the party in this regard, I know) so when I chucked on The Id Will Overcome, the second album by California’s The Abominable Iron Sloth (Sloth henceforth), and found it to share much in common with Eyehategod I was instantly very excited about what the next 40 minutes or so of its running time would bring.
What I quickly came to discover is that while it’s true that Sloth are very much of the same ilk as Eyehategod with the screamed, almost tortured vocal delivery of Justin Godfrey and the band’s thick as molasses doom tinged and somewhat chaotic musical delivery there is one thing that separates them from their peers and that is focus and cohesion or, rather, their marked lack of these qualities.
The overwhelming majority of The Id Will Overcome is made up of songs that, on average, barely manage to scrape past the two minute mark or, in a few cases, barely manage to break past the ONE minute mark with the direct result being a series of songs that could have quite easily made some kind of statement or lasting impact but are instead disposed of all too quickly and flash by with lots of promise but very little follow through. There are exceptions here, however, where the band does allow their ideas to develop into longer and more fully fleshed out compositions on songs like excellent Two Black Helicopters, Nineties Male and Kilimanjaro Dreamin that serve as real highlights on the album but, simultaneously, also serve as a frustrating reminder of the absence of excellence throughout the rest of the album; at what could have and probably should have been done with the rest of the material. Adding insult to injury is the penultimate track that alone runs for about a quarter of the overall running time of the album but is a strange and, frankly, unsatisfying ambient piece that, to this reviewer, serves very little purpose and is just one more frustration with the album. Hell, at least if it’d been the final track, or even a hidden track you would be able to pass it by much easier rather than having it break up whatever flow the album had been able to achieve up until that point.
If taken purely as a mood piece then The Id Will Overcome is very effective at conveying the ugly and chaotic doom message that it has at the forefront of each of its compositions and, on a certain level, I can totally appreciate that. The thing is though that appreciating something and actually enjoying it and wanting to listen to it over and over again are two completely separate things and, unfortunately, The Id Will Overcome leans too far towards the former with much too little of the latter. Yes there are some great moments to be found and yes the atmosphere is excellent but when it comes down to it there just isn’t enough of either to make this the truly amazing album that I think it had the potential to be.
(Metal Blade Records/Riot! Entertainment)
