AHAB

Crushing, atmospheric and ultimately another win for Ahab with album number two. If you are familiar with ‘The Call of the Wretched Sea’ then you know what to expect, although their may be a delicacy and gentleness in some of the lighter moments that expand on their nautical themes of drifting on the wide expanse of the oceans. Ahab are a band who understand how to pace themselves, (let’s face it, to do 10 – 12 minute funeral doom songs well you have to!) and ‘The Divinity of Oceans’, although a long listening experience, has many twists and turns to satisfy and keep you coming back for more. Just as the first album was based on Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ tale, this album is based on another book ‘The Loss of The Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale’ by Owen Chase and Thomas Nickerson. This is the real story behind Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’. It deals with the true life adventure of a whaling ship, the ‘Essex’, which in 1820 was rammed and sunk by a Sperm Whale leaving 20 sailors to suffer the horror of being cast adrift in the South Pacific in three small wooden boats. Like all good art/ music which borrows it’s themes from somewhere else I find Ahab inspirational. They transport and transpose the listener to where they want - the South Pacific in this circumstance - and make you want to read the source material they get their themes from. Once again, an expertly crafted album of Funeral Nautic Doom Metal!

LABEL:

FORMAT:

Napalm Records

Album

THE DIVINITY OF OCEANS

Review by Paul Sims

RUNNING TIME:

67:34

RELEASE DATE:

27th July 2009

TRACK LISTING

1) Yet Another Raft of the Medusa (Pollard's Weakness)
2) The Divinity of Oceans
3) O Father Sea
4) Redemption Lost
5) Tombstone Carousal
6) Gnawing Bones (Coffin's Lot)
7) Nickerson's Theme

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

Germany

"Crushing, atmospheric and ultimately another win for Ahab with album number two."