According to their Bandcamp site, ELDERSEER describe themselves as a "melodic death/doom metal band taking influences from the melancholic UK gothic doom scene from the '90s".  At first listen, the band clearly embraces these melodic elements of doom.  The songs are heavy and plodding, but lean heavily into simple, memorable melodies.  The vocals are harsh and dark, yet Barry Copestake's enunciation is clear, an almost desperate plea for understanding.  ELDERSEER acts to pull back the covers from the corpse of life on Earth.  It's an audacious undertaking- consisting of songs from their first EP recorded in 2018 and a few newer songs from last year, their debut conjures up the blackened melodies of Washington state's legendary AGALLOCH, as well as fellow luminaries ANATHEMA and early PARADISE LOST. In my mind it's more blackened than it is death, but that's just the meaningless gate-keeping that every sad-ass metal reviewer inevitably gets sucked into. Second song "Under a Black Sky" seems to encapsulate the modus operandi for the band.

It starts off with heavy, down-picked guitar harmonies over sluggish power chords and a snail's pace kick-snare combo.  The song picks up as Copestake growls the chorus, "under a dark sky, life becomes clearer." Breaking down at the 3:00 mark, a Pink Floyd-ish keyboard fill slowly fills in the space, minor chords painting the bleakness with a starless melancholy before returning to the opening theme.  The use of keyboards and piano on the album add an interesting break to the crushing doom ELDERSEER brings to these nine epic songs of disdain and misery. If this was a world where middle-aged metalheads were topping the charts, "Under a Black Sky" might be in the top ten. It's a memorable, well-crafted example of doom at it's best, a piano outro making sure the listener knows how fucking hopeless life on this planet can be. The album picks up, if not in its sludgy pace, in its confidence with the last four songs. These maybe the newest songs the band has recorded, so it really bodes well for the direction ELDERSEER may be taking themselves in the future.

"She Is the Ocean" features some great vocal work from Copestake, layered with effects and doubling. There is some interesting clean guitar work, swollen with effects that conjure up the crushing pressure of three hundred million cubic miles of water covering this pale blue dot. "She'll cleanse my soul to make me new," pleads Copestake. "I am again now: sail myself ashore. She is the ocean." The lyrics often play with metaphors that don't always work- ("The World is Your CLOISTER"?  "The Struggle is ETHEreal?" are both titles of the following two songs, for God's sake.)- but in the case of "She is the Ocean," there's an intensity to the music and the lyrics that make a powerful piece when unified.  It's the perfect combination of doom and doomed love: her love is the ocean, and I'm drowning in it. ELDERSEER ends "Drown In the Shallowness" on a high note.

The last four songs are as good an example of blackened doom that you'll hear all year.  At over an hour, the album is probably at least twenty to thirty minutes too long.  Couple the last four songs with "Under a Black Sky" and another new composition, and you've got something that could be really special.  It's understandable that ELDERSEER and Meuse Music Records wanted to release all of the stuff these guys have worked so hard on over the past years, but the album loses its potency over the extended listening time.  That being said, "Drown In the Shallowness" is an effective journey into the darkened souls of this increasingly lonely and sad existence, and for that ELDERSEER deserves a spin.