WASTELAND COVEN is a Doom Metal band out of Toledo, Ohio, US. They formed in 2018 and just this year, April 17 to be exact, they released their debut EP, "Ruined." Although it comprises only three tracks, it clocks in at a hefty 23 minutes and carries a lead-packed punch. They come at you with a dual guitar assault and vocalist, Susan Mitchel, doubles on bass. I mention this because I love a band that plays to economies of scale with no superfluous members cluttering up the stage. For me it says the band means business. And if Doom is their business, WASTLELAND COVEN indeed delivers.

The band's moniker, several of the tracks, and the EP title would suggest they are all about the end of days and apocalypse and such, but not so. There may be some similar thematic motifs woven throughout the EP, but it doesn't come across with a heavy-handed agenda (no pun intended) - just some down-tuned, well-executed tunes celebrating sober, dark topics and kicking out some jams in the process.

The EP leads off with "Midsummer Days" which invokes the recent horror film, "Midsommer," or at least the eldritch undertones. After an unsettling intro of over a minute and a half, Anderson and Collins lay in slow moving, sludgy riffs weighted with Mitchel's sonorous bass and Wilcox's insistent drum work. Wilcox btw is one of those drummers who fills in the spaces with jazz inferences and urges the band forward like an intrepid walk through the marshes, throwing out solid step stones and creating an erratic but intentional path. And I mean that in a positive way. Susan's ethereal vocals float throughout like the will-o-wisps you might encounter in said marsh, and someone on synth layers in intermittent breaks which add a haunting nuance. This ten-minute track lays out the first plank to the EP and says, yep, we got some serious Doom going on here.

Track two, "Great Colossus" offers up a more sci-fi theme but adds to it a poetic slant and suggests the colossus may be a metaphor for something else entirely. There is a nice shift at the 3:56 mark which lets you know they can manage their velocity as well as their gravity. The final track, "Endless Night," is the shortest but heaviest in the set, and it absolutely cranks. It eases in with the subtly of night before the bottom drops out and the band trasitions into a locomotive groove taken straight from the TROUBLE handbook. Similar to "Great Colossus" the song swings into overdrive at the three-quarter mark and moves us solidly into the epic mosh zone. Instead of reverting back to a lower gear after a minute or so, the band instead maintains critical velocity with Mitchel belting out the final stanza, "Though you tremble standing before the grave / When you cross the threshold there will be no pain / Dread will pass as the twilight fades / And you give yourself to death's embrace." The perfect closing to a near perfect track.

"Ruined" represents a strong debut for WASTELAND COVEN. It has the internal consistency of a band who knows who they are as a group yet offers up a variety of compositions which showcase their individual talents and range. This is a no-brainer for any Doom fan - meaty riffs, soaring vocals, thunderous rhythm section, smart and moving lyrics, crisp production.