Ramesses – Take the Curse (2010)

All the way from the UK, today we get on our review queue Ramesses latest crushing releases “Take the Curse”. While we are huge Doom Metal fans, we tend to go for the Death-Doom bands rather than the Sludge/Psychedelic Metal bands. Ramesses falls on the second category and while not our favorite band in the world, they do a great job in creating 10 solid tracks for this new release.

The problem most people might have about Sludge/Doom Metal is the lack of ‘originality’ and diversity than most bands present. We rather look at Sludge/Doom Metal releases from a perspective of effectiveness rather than originality or diversity, and Ramesses is a very effective band in our opinion. The band creates a very bleak and sometimes trippy atmosphere that not everybody pulls off these days.

The guitar work features the traditional down-tuned riffs that we can always expect from decent Doom Metal. The drumming is also fairly standard for a release of this kind. The trippy keyboards and samples give that extra psychedelic dimension to the music, but they never get to be as good as the ones used by Jex Thoth and similar bands.

The vocals on “Take the Curse” vary between some growl-like screams and a monotone raspy scream that feels just right for this kind of music. There isn’t much experimentation done by Ramesses in this release, allowing the band to focus on crafting their own brand of Sludge/Doom Metal without the pressure of being groundbreaking.

Like we mentioned before, the band is not even close to being original or even having extremely great musicians, they just get their shit done by creating a hypnotic and drowning atmosphere that will immerse you into “Take the Cruse” since the first riff till the last drum fill. And because of this, we think that this album is a very fine example of powerful Psychedelic Doom/Sludge Metal.

As far as we are concerned about releases of this genre, we think that “Take the Curse” is a very solid album that should be in every Doom/Sludge Metalhead collection. We love how Ramesses can keep stuff simple and be extremely effective in creating songs that capture the true essence of the genre.

Release: June 21st, 2010

Country: UK