Sweden’s Isole formed in 2004 and since then have released three albums with Bliss of Solitude being the latest. The band has slowly been gathering momentum with the earlier albums getting decent reviews. I’d been wanting to check this band out for a while mainly because a friend couldn’t stop raving about the 2 songs he’d heard on download.com or something like that.

So anyway, the band mainly focus on a crawling single tempo doom metal where the riffs repeat themselves through the course of the song, the vocal’s are almost chant like and follow the guitar lines for the most part and the leads when they happen sound like classic Candlemass. In fact the band at times sound more like Candlemass than that band does these days. There’s also some Anathema and Solitude Aeturnus in the mix but considering the impact those two bands have had on the genre, I suppose it’s only to be expected. Where the band succeeds, is in writing sprawling epic doom metal that always manages to get its hook in you.

Stand out tracks include album opener By Blood with its droning repetitive riff, the superb Imprisoned in Sorrow which manages to mix influences from classic doom and the whole post metal scene and the title song which owes quite a bit to Solitude Aeturnus but manages to sound original enough.

You’ve probably guessed by now that the band is a bit derivative. There’s a lot of Candlemass in these songs and the influence of Solitude Aeturnus also creeps in more than once. Early Anathema seems to have become the benchmark for most new bands and you’ll find some of those influences in these songs as well. However, having said all of that, Bliss of Solitude is a pretty good album. It’s not a case of the band transcending influences or anything like that. It’s just about the band sticking to what made doom metal so awesome in the first place and wearing their influences on their sleeve.

Bliss of Solitude is not the all encompassing crushing doom experience that I thought it was on my first listen and the more you hear it, the more obvious the influences become. However, if you’re a fan of the genre then the band is a bit better than competent and some of these songs are pretty good.



Label - Napalm
Year of Release - 2008