There are ghosts everywhere; you can even close your eyes and see in the thick darkly depths of your sunless soul crumbs tiny nymphs or bigger burly ghosts of the recent musical past. They are here; the only thing you have to do is to open up your radar and feel them, see their white ribbons above your heads, hear their needs...and yours too. Do you miss the old good times of a quavery voice in a psych horror decor? Are you huge fans of the glorious past of DEATH SS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, even THE BRONX CASKET Co.? Don't worry my friends, I absolutely understand the symptoms and I think I have found the medicine: today's 'ghost' listens to the name THE WOUNDED KINGS and comes from the misty area of Dartmoor, England.

Their previous work, "Embrace Of The Narrow House" from 2008, have left us with the best impressions for their musical skills due to the unique blend of Italian seventies prog-rock, heavy doom atmosphere and psychedelic horror. Including the distinct vocals referring between Myke Hideous' tunes and Messiah Marcolin's lyricism and pompous operatic reading, the brand new album, "The Shadow Over Atlantis", continues the band's home made occult tradition, putting a signature in the international doom map. The addition of the 'Kings' in this year 'Roadburn Festival' is by no means accidental, so, lets see for what is this all about.

The starting "The Swirling Mist" has 100% the ability to initiate us in the dark and occult world of THE WOUNDED KINGS from the first three melodies; the time duration -10 minutes- is enough to forget past and present but is also little to cerebrate the future. Thank heaven, the future is near with the upcoming "Baptism Of Atlantis" making the landscape clearer and clearer. Despair, loneliness and pure psychedelic horror are pulling us down into a Castlevania-esque background, full of trembly voices, monotonous and heavy bass lines and seventies keyboards that fill uniformly this doom package and in fact continues in the rest of the album. Mark also that during "The Sons Of Belial" you can find SLEEP's trademark from the "Dopesmoker" album. No matter what, DEATH SS-ism and SABBATH-esque forms are the main ingredient of this quartet and it's not a shame, seeing the total result.

It's all about ghosts after all: ghosts of Mr. Marcolin, ghosts of Mr. Paul Chain, ghosts of Mr. DD Verni; past, decayed, witchcraft inspired Doom Metal with a malevolent edge to it, owing to the dreary, minimal piano. With the fitting seventies sounded production this all works fine for me. If you think yourselves votaries of doom ritualism and paradox occultism with a Lovecraft-esque tone, this one is a highly recommended release.
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