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YOB ‘The Unreal Never Lived’ Metal Blade(2005)
It was something like a year and a half ago when I started tormenting the people in the promotional department of Metal Blade records with my endless e-mails (sorry Andreas), asking them to add us both to their promo and mailing lists. Well I still remember visiting the label’s website and checking out their latest releases, one of which was “The Illusion of Motion” – the third album of the Oregon-based outfit YOB. Even though I started receiving promos a few months prior to the release of that album, this specific one never arrived in my letterbox – sadly, I had missed the opportunity to listen to the work of one of the very few Doom Metal bands that have a contract with this big label.
It looks like my wish is finally going to be granted, since a year after the abovementioned release, the US trio is back with another studio album entitled “The Unreal Never Lived”. Normally people say that you should not judge a book by its cover, but you can understand where this band is coming from by simply looking at their album art. For this specific release, the members of YOB have come up with a very simple but quite interesting image, which, in retrospect, relates to both the music and the titles of the four unconventional compositions that are featured here.
Well, having a four track album with a total running time of fifty one minutes sounds a really challenging task, but also quite difficult to accomplish, so how successful was it, after all? I assume that this is up to every individual to decide, but as far as I’m concerned, the feelings that I got while listening to “The Unreal Never Lived” are quite varied. The opening track of the album “Quantum Mystic” is a brilliant composition - by far the most interesting song of the whole album. Combining the straight-forwardness and the dirty sound of the Electric Wizard with the experimental spirit of Voivod and filled with Megadeth-influenced vocals, this eleven minute composition is an amazing piece of music that I found no trouble getting hooked on.
The following track “Grasping Air” finds the band making a change both in terms of the musical direction and the style of vocals. The slow-tempo guitar riffs are either accompanied by heavy death metal roars, or distorted “clean” lamentations, both straight from Mike Scheidt’s lungs. During the numerous times I have listened to this album, I found that my opinion towards this track would change according to my mood, and that applies for the remaining two compositions of this album. Even if you find no problem in relating to the unearthly detuned groove of “Kosmos”, it takes quite an effort for an “outsider” to get into the spirit of “The Mental Tyrant” whose twenty one sorrowful and pessimistic minutes are enough to discourage even the bravest of audiences.
I think that this trio is definitely heading in the right direction with “The Unreal Never Lived”. This album has been quite enjoyable at times, so I hope that it is going to appeal not only to the Doom Metal elitists, but to a variety of different audiences. I am not quite convinced that I am giving this album the rating that it really deserves, and I’m being very honest when I say that I hope that I’ll one day regret my decision.
***½
Review by John Stefanis
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