Abraham
The Serpent, the Prophet & the Whore

“Born in 1866 BC, Abraham lived a peaceful life near the town of Sodome, NC. He married his half-sister who gave birth to some 14 kids while already aged far over a hundred years... those golden days are gone, but the virile power of Abraham's beard survived and he was reborn in 2007 as a rock band near Lausanne, Switzerland.” That is how the press information about the second album by Abraham is opened, sounds great, doesn’t it? to me it does sound quite unfascinating to be honest, but the cover artwork is fascinating sort of styled like some old artwork from times long gone maybe even from 1866 BC. The second album for us from this label that is new to us, Pelagic and I did like the first one I reviewed from them in Earthship so it could be logical to assume that this would be a high class act as well and according to reviews around the net it sure seems to be. Unfortunately I don’t always seem to agree with general consensus on the interweb, but then again anyone interested on my opinion probably doesn’t either.

Sludge, I have deduced from deductive reasoning, is the genre of this band. It is hard, heavy, with some touches of melodicness but mainly of darkness as it is based on a book the guys picked up somewhere not really knowing the author, wikipedia, bla bla bla and such things. The lyrics are freely adapted from the story, kind of weird thing to write as it would be strange to sing an entire book for an album, wouldn’t you say. Anyway, the production is top class, the singing is not. The vocals are monotonous when in growl mode which is the mode you notice most from this album and the singer does sound like most other growlers out there to be honest. The songs themselves are dynamic but not overly varied over the eight tracks and 46 minutes either. I will say though that on production alone this is a high class album.

When listening to this for a few times a question arises in my mind, why does everyone slightly heavier today have to use growling as main vocal choice? In Abraham’s case it would have worked well with regular clean vocals and some aggressive screaming mixed in rather than just having a monotonous roar. They also do the worst start with an evil roar to open the album, that is not a good way to start an album as there are not many good albums that start that way, the question is if there is any.

The annoying thing is though that the music is good, it is dynamic, energetic, interesting, dark with the smallest rays of hope making it feel very heavy and a slight bit ominous. But over everything looms this growl, this monotonous noise that is so overused these days that I will soon get a headache every time I hear such a thing. Of course that is a bit overreacting as there is good growling with a dynamic delivery of lyrics but the one Abraham shows does not have that, it unfortunately makes something good into something completely pointless.

So, in the end if you like aggressive sludgy music with monotonous vocals, then this is for you and the internet reviewers who probably do says that it is very good, so for you fans of the sludge genre it will be a treat. I on the other hand does not like monotonous things and this album despite some really good intentions falls short of the target thanks to those dull vocals which just ruins music of today.