From: Extreme Metal Voyager
Published: February 17, 2016
Original Link

Today’s album is produced by a Spanish band called Womb. Also worth mentioning is that this is a co-release between two labels; Russia’s Solitude Productions and Canada’s Hypnotic Dirge Records. Spain, Russia and Canada, now that’s a three way cooperation I don’t see that often. Pretty neat! First impression when glancing at the artwork: blackness prevails! Only ebony and no ivory, although Dale Cooper will probably tell you, that he takes his coffee blacker than what Womb have presented with their debut album “Deception Through Your Lies”, visually and musically speaking.

There’s not that much info on the band. “Equidistant”, a demo from 2014 might indicate that this is a relatively new band, and with limited descriptions and murky band pics, we’re dealing with an unabashed underground portrait. Anyway, the five tracks compiled for this release draw upon a classic doom metal model, immediately manifested in the lonely piano notes and heavy riffs of “Echoes Of Our Scars” which opens up the mournful affair.

As the track unfolds in all its vintage My Dying Bride fashion, it becomes apparent that while there are many familiar trademarks, the songwriting also involves a great deal of somewhat post black metal sounding styles in the guitar playing. There’s a lot of exchanges between slow, weeping leads (mostly identified within doom/gothic metal) and aggressive tremolo pickings, hinting at the more outstretched and fragile sounds of a post metal atmosphere.

Growls are solid, deep, aggressive and dark, almost as if the poor guy transformed into a soulless creature of the night when getting up to the mic in the studio. A point of criticism lies in the use of clean vocals on some of the songs. The mixed quality suggests that the approach to these serenading vocals could be improved, at least in my opinion. “Echoes Of Our Dust” is an example where the clean vocals seem both misplaced and lacking power (it’s allowed to sound pale in this genre, but I feel there should be intensity in the performance when one is portraying feelings of sadness and loss). On the other hand, “March” has some pretty morose vocals that connect with the rest of the music, so kudos on that one.

The album’s sound clings to low-fi qualities giving off the aforementioned post blackish atmospheres within the sturdy, doomy tempos and murky vocals. This can be seen as a strong asset, placing Womb in an interesting sound world. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if there was a bit more heaviness in the rhythm guitars, but yeah I’m just full of opinions today, opinions everywhere.

The songwriting has potential if further explored. “Ends”, “March” and “Equidistant” are good songs to use a base point to continue developing the style set in motion on “Deception Through Your Lies”. Ultimately, this is a release with some good material, snippets of interesting details and yet also exhibiting a few modest flaws.