ABYSSIAN is a doom metal band from Italy who formed in 2010. "Godly" is their second full length album. The band describes their sound as "Atlantean Dark / Doom Metal" which isn't really a bad description but you can't really sound "Atlantean" so the most apt way I can describe them for review purposes would be Gothic doom metal.

The album, as a whole, is riff based. The guitars have a wonderful tone–crushing but not overly.  The bass guitar stands out on every track and it is refreshing to listen to a band who realizes how important the low end is in metal, especially to a doom band. The album begins with clean guitar notes in the opening track of "Seven." Deep, gothic clean vocals are backed by bass drums as the song builds up.

At the 1:50 mark, the song kicks into gear with heavy riffs, complemented by the bass and vocals.  Around the 25 minute mark, a more extreme vocal style takes over—it helps the song greatly and I wish this vocal style was used more frequently. By track two, "Fall Apart," I noticed the songs have a tendency to meander around without going anywhere.  This song in particular isn't bad but it spends the first three and an a half minutes with the same beat and notes repeating over and over. Obviously this is the hall mark of doom but there just isn't anything musically interesting going on. Monotony sets in too late for the last couple minutes to save the song.

"Nigra Lux" opens with a sense of urgency and speedy riffs that smoothly transition to doom style groove. The bass keeps the song interesting during the verses where the guitars aren't doing much. But the song is much too long—-it is over nine minutes but it's hard to say what it does with it's time as there just isn't much memorable going on. "As The Sun" has a thick main riff that is sludgy as hell. But it reveals a problem: when the band is playing these huge riffs, the album is enjoyable. But the moments where the guitars are clean and quiet, they fail to play any interesting melodies or passages that grab my attention. This song perfectly describes the album as a whole: moments of greatness in between lulls and lows.

The final track "Second Sunrise" is probably my favorite. The opening section is full and melodic. The verses are filled with heavy riffs and more melodic touches. All this elevates the song itself making it very atmospheric. The flow is consistent and it works with the vocals which are almost spoken word as opposed to true singing. Ultimately, I don't think this is a terrible album but it just doesn't have enough interesting moments to keep me coming back.