Let's try something different now. Sludge doom metal from Germany. Really? Sludge doom metal? I have to make a compilation someday of all the metal genres nowadays. Is getting ridiculous. The band is THE MOTH and they are not the new kids on the block. With their fourth full album Frost, the band explores a more gloomy kind of doom metal with distorted guitars and distorted voices and a lot of effects. After many band members coming and going, the band has settled as a trio. Let’s check what they have to offer.

“Me, Myself & Enemy” starts the album with a heavy riff and an industrial metal feel to it. A female robotic voice takes care of the melody. Interesting approach and I have to confess that I do not remember hearing anything like it before. We follow with “Birmingham”, another heavy slow tune. Ok, let’s stop calling sludge- metal and lets call it doom with touches of stoner and industrial metal. The band so far does not present much in vocal melodies. The songs are permeated with chants more than a proper singing melody. “Battlefield” stars and you notice that the vocals are shared by the bass player Cécile and guitar player Freden, however, despite the solid and heavy musical background, the singing parts are chants and a little too robotic for my personal taste. I like melodies. The fourth tune is “Bruised” and this has a little more singing melody. Still with a robotic almost apocalyptic delivery. Like an army of A.I. robots taking the world and killing everybody (soon to happen). The musical part is interesting despite the abrupt ending of the song, but the singing melodies are not engaging to me.

Things start to make more sense to me in “Cathedral”. A better singing melody and an interesting weird tempo signature and guitar riff. It seems that the band is not much into guitar histrionics as well. No guitar solos so far. The most pleasant tune to my ears so far. We pass the halfway point with “Hundreds” that starts like a soundtrack for a horror movie. Very gloomy and dark but the singing is still very poor. Some may say, this is what sludge metal is all about, but not sludge singing. There is nothing captivating in the singing or the singing melodies. There is no energy, nothing that makes you want to sing or yum the melody. Very weird. The most distorted bass you can ever imagine starts with “Frost”. Another song that made a little sense for me. This time with a more interesting vocal performance despite the extreme repetition of the lyrics. The song has a change of tempo and melody in the middle that is also interesting before coming back to the repetition chants asking you to come down and see the light. For me the best song of the album so far.

 “In the City” is next and is another interesting riffage with poor melody and vocals. There is absolutely no passion in the singing just like you hear in electronic music. Just a robot shouting phrases. The vocal melodies and the singing quality is killing this album. It seems that the band wrote the instrumental parts first, recorded everything, and then started singing anything that came to their heads on top of it. We reach “Dust”. Another great metal introduction heavy as fuck. Good riff remitting you to the end of the world but then it comes the weak vocal parts again. Despite not being to my liking, I am sure that there are a lot of listeners that may like this kind of apocalyptic metal with dissonant robotic melodies, but I really do not see anything engaging with the vocals or the melodies and I would not find a concert with this kind of output entertaining. 

The final tune is “Silent” and it has a very slow tempo, however it follows the same style of everything else in the album. Good heavy doom riffs, and poor vocal performance and melody. A little disappointed with the so-called sludge metal. It could be so much more. Despite the reasonable musical performance, what killed me was the vocals in general. I understand using dissonant singing melodies and robotic voices in certain parts of the songs, but when it takes the whole song it gets really boring. More attention should be given in the vocal performances and the writing of melodies. If all sludge metal sounds uninspiring like this, this is not for my ears unfortunately.