Count Raven
Mammons War

Fog and mist a few evenings ago, making the Belloluogo Tower look little more than an ancient, proud, and decaying specter among numerous lonely and anonymous cemetery graves.

In the usual disgusting little bar, in front of yet another warm punch and wrapped in the warmth of alcohol, my friend Maurizio (to whom I renew, even in this review, the promise to keep his name silent) and I came to the realization that as we've grown up, we've lost the ability to get insanely excited about at least 80% of the music that comes our way, unlike when we were younger. Good, bad... who knows!? A nanosecond before falling back into the deepest despair (which we also enjoy), we at least agreed, between the serious and the facetious, that now a new album must be "good" if within the first ten seconds it makes us want to open a beer and start headbanging like lunatics. For example, "Mammons War" is really very good, but it's not enough; because the come-back from the Swedish group Count Raven has been so long-awaited it makes even the most hardened doomster pale in comparison.

Biblical times for the release of this new effort, marked 2009, but the exhausting wait has been honorably rewarded. Their last studio work, "Messiah Of Confusion," dates back to 1996, and what has changed since then? Little... or nothing, luckily! The assault of "The Poltergeist" is a punch in the teeth, a series of elementary and squared riffs as classic doom demands stand out on a marching rhythm. The voice is just the right amount of harsh; and melodic openings, guitar or bass arpeggios, rather than electro-ambient textures (the title track, "Increasing Deserts"), or tribal-folk inserts (no, I'm not crazy, listen to the second part of "A Lifetime" to believe it) contribute to enhance a general sense of loneliness and resignation. It's fine this way. Even with these "novelties," it's only right to associate the name Count Raven with the sacred monsters of doom, especially Saint Vitus and Pentagram, but also the earliest Cathedral and partly the Obsessed; but the epic aura sometimes ("Scream", "Seven Days") also brings to my mind that great album from a few years ago, "Watching From A Distance" by Warning.

Those like me or Maurizio who have discovered the deceit behind the majority of today's music productions (without reference to any particular genre) will also find it easy to love the honesty of an album like "Mammons War," especially because, evidently, Dan Fondelius is a sincere man who knows pain well. For those interested, I attach the link to one of his recent interviews where he also explains the meaning of the lyrics of "To Kill A Child" ("Why, oh why, must this world force me to kill my child/ I can no longer hide, the eternal pain that I feel inside"). R.I.P.