Woods IV : The Green Album

Woods of Ypres are a Canadian doom metal band whose fourth album is the story of a failed relationship, rendered in agonizing detail and with little or no subtlety. From the opening track, "Shards of Love," to the closing "Move On!," frontman David Gold moans and groans in a deep, resonant voice closer to the Crash Test Dummies' Brad Roberts than Type O Negative's Peter Steele, despite lyrics like "Life is just pain and piss/It's nothing that I will miss/Life is just pain and piss and everything is a scam" coming closer to the latter's territory. Some songs, like "Wet Leather," are uptempo and even heroic, while others are slow and chest-compressingly heavy. But the album's overall mood is one of morose fatalism, not catharsis -- Gold isn't working through his pain so much as wallowing in it for an hour and 20 minutes. Still, there's something almost hypnotic about his obsessive gloom, and the band can play. Recommended to those who are sick of fun. ~ Phil Freeman