The 2021 album "Doom of Babylon" was without a doubt one of the best doom albums of the year. The expectations were correspondingly high when multi-instrumentalist, producer and studio technician Roy Waterford aka Watchman announced the follow-up album "The End of all Flesh".
It's darker, full of heavy distorted fuzz and sludge-like guitars - more experimental and still 100% recognizable.
The album starts off heavy down-tuned with "Pour Out The Vials" with distorted vocals and gets totally hypnotic towards the end. You get the full YOB / early Electric Wizard worship here.
"Fire and Brimstone", "Righteous Indignation", "The Smoke" and "The End of all Flesh" take the same line with Sabbathic riffing, heavy, fuzzed-out and distorted. Waterford manages to build up an incredibly dense atmosphere that grabs you directly and pulls you into this dark doom abyss. Until the darkness is broken by guitar solos that give each song its unmistakable peculiarity.
The album keeps breaking out of the well-known "stoner-doom" cage - for example with harmonica vibes straight out of a spaghetti western with "Death is coming". The song begins quietly and then breaks over you like an apocalyptic wave.
The constant change between quiet, mesmerizing parts, the great vocals and the brutally deep doom-riffing make this song the absolute highlight of the album.
"Dividend Kingdom" continues just as menacingly with a short organ intro and a heavy dose of ultra-low and slow Doom with vocals reminiscent of early Monolord.
The whole thing is rounded off by the ingenious artwork by Montdoom, who was also responsible for the artwork on "Doom of Babylon".
-Helge Neumann
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