crushing death/doom from Finland : SOLOTHUS

Gosh, it seems that the finnish scene actually makes proof of an active revival, honouring the godly ancients from the late 80's/early 90's for the greatest pleasure of crushing death/doom fans... Even if they also claim their roots in the legacy of  such bands as ABHORRENCE  and DEMIGOD (along with others like BOLT THROWER, AUTOPSY and ASPHYX),  I would range this young quartet (seriously active since early 2010) much closer to HOODED MENACE than KRYPTS or their fellows STENCH OF DECAY, understand you have to forget any blastbeats here (even if the song "throne of bones" shreds pretty much !!!)...

Released just a few days ago, the debut demo from SOLOTHUS contains 3 songs : "Darkness Gathers here at Night", "Cold Embrace" and "Throne of bones". The sound is pretty good, all instruments being correctly listenable; we've got here crushing mid to slow down-tuned tempos, nicely creeping and crawling  with cavernous vocals which remind a bit the ones of Oula Kerkela (live singer from H.M.).

A slight but sufficiently significant CANDLEMASS influence can be heard too, through nice melodies and amazing solos, tending to give musically a real doom metal edge in some parts (1st song especially) and  showing some very solid abilities from the guitarist in the epic field, that should be in my opinion developped in the future ...
This globally sounds fuckin good, catchy, raw, haunting, twisted and often ugly at the same time ! 

My only serious complaint would concern the vocals in the epic parts, I feel they are too systematically growled the same way, which creates a too important gap with the melodies, exactly what I would reproach to Oula K. too, contrarly to Lasse Pyykkö who sings on HM's studio stuff with more harmony, nuances and deepness. But this has nothing redhibitory at all, especially considering this is the band's first recording this can be certainly improved with time and experience and that doesn't prevent me at all to think that  SOLOTHUS has an  awesome potencial and will be definitely a name to count on in the near future...

http://www.reverbnation.com/solothus
https://www.facebook.com/Solothus
http://www.myspace.com/solothus