Sweden's OCEAN CHIEF are no strangers to Doom metal. Having been knocking around since the turn of the Millennium, they've already churned out a respectably sized discography and their latest full length is a determined stab at reaching a wider audience. It is a long, meandering record that veers between crushingly dense moments of primal heaviness and bluesier, psychedelic passages. These guys don't want to be propping up the support slots any more, they clearly want to be headliners but while "Universums Hard" has its fair share of great moments, it's hard to imagine this will be their breakthrough.

The opening title track tells you more or less everything you need to know about this band. It's a crawling, lethargic slice of Doom filled with all the prerequisites; the riffs are down tuned and so dirty they could make sludge drip from your speakers, the vocals are gruff and low in the mix and the rhythm section is possessed by an almost robotic stomp. At over ten minutes in length it's exhausting just to make it to the end and if you've already cut your teeth on ELECTRIC WIZARD or CANDLEMASS, then this'll be another welcome addition to the record collection.

With a further six songs to come, none of them showing any kind of forward momentum, "Universums Hard" is ideally suited for a night spent watching the smoke from your lungs spiral towards the ceiling. The trouble is that it doesn't necessarily do anything new. Songs like "Oandlighet" and "Morkret" are perfectly fine pieces of sledgehammer doom, but they also miss that spark of genius that made the recent ZAUM album such a joy to behold. It's also unevenly loaded, as the second half is largely made up of shorter tracks and it makes for a slightly disjointed listening experience.

That being said, taken in isolation the music is perfectly enjoyable and the closing "Vandringen" is a great finisher with an enjoyably wasted finish. It's not a bad album by any means, but their reliably predictable doom is just a bit too reliably predictable. It's good, but it's definitely a 'diehards only' release.