Amocoma - Go To Hell (2007)

Hand-sketched skulls and an abstract representation of their name, all surrounded with a black border. Amocoma's debut, Go To Hell, with all it's melancholy, presents us of a case example where judging a book by it's cover can provide fairly accurate results. It commands us to head to a destination and even gives us a path of skulls (or maybe it's a pyramid, I guess?). Regardless of the cover's true perspective, it's clear that this album is a menacing beast, and it spends no time lightening up it's image.

From start to finish in this album, there is only darkness. Don't take it from me, they tell us themselves naming one of their tracks "These Are Your Choices... Darkness". There is nothing of a bright glaze. Every sound, from the guitar to the vocals is drenched in a thick fuzz. It trudges along from one melancholy outburst to another, dragging along it's simplistic riffs, and similarly simplistic, pounding, maybe almost tribal drums. As the guitar and drums continue, mostly looping themselves, we're frequently interrupted with demonic screams, themselves struggling to sound out above the fuzz. Possibly some resemblance in this respect to (for a band posted here before) Circle of Ouroborus (the occasional shrieks from them), but while CoO occasionally spends time with a more hopeful, existentialist view of the bleakness and torment, there is none here. The music is haunting, the growls are haunting, again, with this, there is only one choice... darkness.

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