Counting Hours – The Will

Counting Hours

‘The Will’

The Vinyl Division

Death-Doom/Gothic Metal

FFO: Katatonia, October Tide, Swallow The Sun, Anathema, My Dying Bride, ParadiseLost

There are deep cuts and then there are chasms so deep they might as well be the Mariana Trench. This is how Counting Hours began their life back in the late 90’s when a few demo tapes began to circle in the Nordic countries. Fast forward 20 years and ex-Rapture guitarist Jarno Salomaa finally assembles a solid line-up which features members of The Chant, Impaled Nazarene, Shape of Despair and Colosseum to deliver the bands debut album ‘The Will’.

                Mix all these together and what do you get? Well, with ‘The Will’, Counting Hours turn back the clock to those heady days of the late 90’s to deliver an album that has all the appeal of Paradise Lost, October Tide and especially Katatonia and Anathema when they were good. Therefore, what the listener can expect are plenty of Gothic overtones butting up with that tantalisingly good death-doom sound that makes this genre so miserably brilliant. Yet, ‘The Will’ is hardly an exercise in nostalgia with song relics from 20 years ago; no, instead what the listener gets is a contemporary sounding album full of emotive atmospheric soundscapes that juxtapose themselves against a more crushing sound, particularly during ‘To Exist All False’, ‘Profound’ and the excellent ‘Among the Pines We’ll Die’.

                ‘The Will’ is an album which grows with endearment with each listen and fans of old school death-doom will love it. It is bleak, it is depressing, and it is bloody good.

Adam McCann