Album Review: Old Man Gloom - 'The Ape Of God II'

The second album (well, second album in one) from Old Man Gloom, whom decided to give the same name and album cover to their two new albums (full-lengths six and seven respectively), is another stand out. [Note: you’ll find the review of the first album here). For convenience’s sake, let’s refer to these four tracks that comprise the second instalment as ‘The Ape Of God II’ so as to try to avoid some of the confusion.

‘The Ape Of God II’ is similar to the first creation; it’s filled with sludgy riffs, all kinds of samples, booming drums, crushing bass, some really inhuman growls and the occasional bit of haunting melody.

It starts off with ‘Burden’, which commences with some seriously long and harsh feedback and some may think they’ve just stumbled across a band masquerading as The Chariot. Sadly, this isn’t The Chariot, but fuck, Old Man Gloom have again delivered the goods without damaging the product in the move. The slow, churning wheels of this song are the over-powering guitars and bass and the guttural scream and it steadily builds and builds across its 13-minute length and explodes all over your ears, before it slowly dies away like Adam Sandler's acting career.

The eerie outro of ‘Predators’, which at six minutes long feels vastly short and fast than the rest, leads into the equally disturbing and eerie ‘A Hideous Nightmare Lie Upon The World’, which is the best song out of these four ear-carving monstrosities. Insane feedback and noisy distortion coupled with creepy spoken word moments, distorted vocals and crazed ravings (seriously, these lyrics are bonkers), some samples, and a host of other sonically crazy shit make this one a really haunting and disturbing song.

The last track, ‘Arrow To Our Hears’ actually has some real singing in it. Though it doesn’t feel out of place and the tone is perfectly set by the rest of the instrumentation. In the middle, the band's post-metal influences shine for a good few minutes before the vocals and heavy guitars return and then it’s all aboard the express service to Heavy-Riff Ville and it all moves towards a hectic and earth-moving finale.

Is four tracks enough to come close to the heights of the correlating album? Not all the way, but it comes up pretty close to being just as good and considering that this is 47 minutes long, there’s plenty to find and curl up closely with here.

It's rather fitting that a band comprised of prominent and professional musicians creates an album (or, albums) of this standard. At times, on another musical level, Old Man Gloom have really excelled with 'The Ape of God'.

1. Burden

2. Predators

3. A Hideous Nightmare Lie Upon The World

4. Arrow To Our Hearts