Paranaut - The Hills Fell Silent

Myspace:www.myspace.com/paranaut

Reviewed by Dave

Alright so to kick things off properly I'm going to review the debut release of one of the most underrated bands in Portland, OR these days. I'm talking about The Hills Fell Silent by Paranaut. These guys lay out the fundamentals of a proper doom metal album in incredibly relentless, thick, dark, sludgy slabs of stereophonic power.

The album is really all about heavy dark depressing atmosphere and they pull this off quite admirably. After listening to their album I usually feel like taking a nap or a couple shots of whiskey. If you are looking for something melodic and full of hooks or high flying guitar solos or otherwise have ADD issues, this not the record for you. If you are into hypnotic huge fuzzy dark riffs propelled by thunderous dynamic drumming and intensely scorched vocals leaning towards Max Cavelera or Barney Greenway you might want to check it out.

So you are probably wondering, "ok that's great but what makes this really much different than your normal stoner metal release?" The main elements that really stand out are the general dynamics and grooves that this band explore. Instead of building things from the ground up with the drums laying out the groove things are reversed with an interesting kind of jazzy effect. The guitar riffs really set the tempo and the pacing while the drumming is continuously changing, accenting and augmenting the chord structures in interesting innovative ways I haven't really heard in this genre before. The drums are also played with a pretty light touch overall creating an underlying urgency that I find very interesting and unique to Paranaut.

Some people might be turned off by the raw harsh tones of the bass and guitar, but it's really more about creating interesting unique sounds and textures than playing the “our guitar player has the biggest dick in the room” game that a lot of metal bands get caught up in.

There are only a couple things that I could really say negatively about The Hills Fell Silent. Sometimes riffs get a bit repetitive and the build-ups sometimes in my opinion take a bit too long to develop. I also really liked the guitar solos on this record I just wish they were more up front in the mix. Although the vocals are pretty sparsely included on the record I also would have liked to see them placed a bit more prominently in the overall mix, again really to add more overall dynamics.

This is a big, dark, brooding, hulk of a debut album. In my humble opinion this record really lays out what a good doom record is all about. It's the type of cd 17 year olds should be listening to while skipping class cruising the hills behind Vernonia in their old rusty camaro, high as a kite.

Using Jimmy's time honored scale of 1 to 10 minutes in reference to the auto erotic pleasure produced by this album I'll give 7.5 minutes.