By:
Ernesto Aguilar
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 08/06/2018
Label: Relapse
Records
Clever
arrangement, subtlety over volume and a clear-eyed grasp of honing an
atmosphere make these cuts inviting in myriad ways. They're the kind of songs
that give you a front-row seat for Yob's past meeting its future, and you
cannot help but be transfixed.
“Our Raw Heart”
CD//CS//DD//2LP track listing:
1).
Ablaze
2).
The Screen
3).
In Reverie
4).
Lungs Reach
5).
Beauty In Falling Leaves
6).
Original Face
7).
Our Raw Heart
The Review:
Yob has emerged as perhaps doom's most
popular band of the moment, though the band's presence has hardly been
momentary. Since 2002's "Elaborations
of Carbon," the Eugene, Oregon-based collective have stoked a
passionate fan base. Its albums have gotten progressively stronger as Yob's sound has matured. "The Illusion of Motion," released by Metal Blade in 2004, and "The Unreal Never Lived" offered up the following year,
were considered watermarks for the group. Yob's 2006 breakup did
not last too long. Its return in the form of
"The Great Cessation" was greeted with much praise for a deeper,
denser aural than ever before.
And
so it has gone. Solid but infrequent albums and lots of live performances
became an unfortunate drought of about four years. "Clearing the Path to Ascend" in 2014 was a stunning
record, one that vaulted Yob even higher.
Without question, the band has been consistent in its growth and overall
quality. "…Ascend" helped
the group's mythos only expand.
"Our Raw
Heart," has already won plaudits from across the
spectrum. For good reason. Yob's return is
magnificent. Yet it's outstanding not because it's heavy. It is, somewhat, but "Our Raw Heart" succeeds
because it is visionary, emotional and more innovative than virtually every
single one of Yob's contemporaries. It's a great album
because it sounds wholly atypical of what you think of metal, yet it is
quintessentially metal.
Yob's newest is influenced by Mike
Scheidt's brush with death in 2017. He nearly succumbed to an infection created
by complications related to other problems, but it is not the first time the
band's spiritual leader has looked over the abyss with his tribe. Fans of
"…Ascend" and other albums
may have most loved Scheidt's vulnerability, and his examination of his own
mental health issues and other struggles in his songwriting and performances.
Thus it is fitting that "Our Raw
Heart" would beckon this tattered brother- and sisterhood into Scheidt's
world one more time. And, as you may have heard on "The Screen," released just before the album, there's going to
be pain. "Sensing old death, sharing
no house with it," Scheidt muses. "In
moments obscure, that which endures."
That’s
part about being somewhat heavy? Truth be told, Yob will
never be a pop band and are not abandoning the wall of sound the band so
masterfully creates. Those tense moments as in "The Screen" (tightly wound in its own right, surely) are
paired with all-out harsher tracks such as "In
Reverie," with some of the cascading, volume-notched heavy music you
will hear in a minute. "Original
Face" in another one of those songs certain to remind you how hard Yob can bring its music, and why their creativity in doing
it is so revered. Clever arrangement, subtlety over volume and a clear-eyed
grasp of honing an atmosphere make these cuts inviting in myriad ways. They're
the kind of songs that give you a front-row seat for Yob's
past meeting its future, and you cannot help but be transfixed.
What
may end up etched in your own heart, however, are the more delicate, complex
songs. "Lungs Reach" lolls
gently out of the mist, as wisps of guitar and then that challenging voice come
for you. "Beauty in Falling
Leaves" glances by with affirmative chords that lead you to a valley
of despondent rhythms, until it soars with Scheidt's inimitable vocal. By the
time the album closes with the title track, a 14-minute cohesive yet
inescapably macabre centerpiece, you learn slowly that this is why Yob has fashioned an arc of almost mythological
proportions. Greater than most, more dynamic than more, "Our Raw Heart" is what makes metal you cannot but love.
“Our Raw
Heart”
is available here
