Narrow House – A Key to Panngrieb (2012)

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Being huge fans of Doom Metal, we sometimes dabble in the realms of Funeral Doom Metal, its ugly and boring cousin. While we are not huge fans of the genre due to its mind-numbing repetition and ridiculously slow execution, some bands like Shape of Despair and Thergothon are still ok in our book. Hence today we have Narrow House and their less boring approach to the genre with “A Key to Panngrieb”. By introducing lush atmospheric elements that range from keyboards to cellos, this band really grabs ahold of the listener and keeps it engaged for the duration of the huge songs in this album.

Opening with the crushing “Poslednee Pristanishe”, things start very well with the perfect mixture of slow and painful riffs, commanding growls, and brilliant atmosphere. The simplicity of the music is really well shrouded behind a well-crafted atmosphere thanks to the keyboards. The band does a great job in navigating through such a long song with well-placed tempo changes. The same can be said about the considerably shorter track “Psevdoriatunok”, but with a nice combination of growls and ethereal clean vocals, very reminiscent of Draconian and such bands.

The hypnotic “Steklianniy Bog” has to be our favorite track thanks to its very martial feeling and unique atmosphere. The pace of things is majestic allowing the song to free flow slowly and carrying all the emotions through it. Closing with the 11 minute scorcher “Pod Maskoy Etoy”, the band really brings this release full-circle with a powerful yet elegant track. However, there are a few speedups that we didn’t quite like since the sound very abrupt and chaotic, but other than this little detail the song is pretty solid.

“A Key to Panngrieb” is definitely for fans of Funeral Doom Metal that need a bit more than just punishing riffs repeated over and over. With the atmospheric elements, Narrow House manages to be above the average bands in the genre and should actually be considered as one of promises of the genre. If the band puts a bit more effort in creating a bit more diverse songs, we foresee ourselves liking them quite a lot more in the future, and we are sure they will also attract more fans this way.

Band: Narrow House Album: A Key to Panngrieb
Label: Solitude Productions

Release: August 20th, 2012

Oficial Site myspace

Genre: Funeral/Atmospheric Doom Metal

Country: Ukraine

Rating: 83/100
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