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Pilgrim: Misery wizard
19/03/12 || gk
Doom trio Pilgrim came to my attention last year with a superb two-song single followed by a split with sludge doom outfit Ice Dragon. The band played a slow and crushing take on traditional doom that was impressive and in less than a year, the trio had been signed by Metal Blade and “Misery Wizard” is the band’s debut album.
The album opens with “Astaroth” which was previously on the aforementioned split. It’s a slow and crawling doom song where the riff takes its own time and slowly develops into a crushing monster over six odd minutes. What works here is that the central riff has a classic doom metal melody that can get stuck in your head for days on end. It’s a pretty good start to the album and an accurate representation of what’s to come. Title song “Misery Wizard” is up next and it’s one of two slightly weak songs on the album. The central riff is a bit too plodding in nature and the band settles into a one note drone for over ten minutes. Absolutely nothing happens here and it’s a bit like watching paint dry. “Masters of the Sky” again does very little for me with one riff stretched into a boring eleven minute song and while this kind of repetition works well with funeral doom or drone, Pilgrim are not extreme enough to make this work. It’s almost like the band want to play funeral doom but can’t get rid of their classic doom metal sound and really go all out.
“Adventurer” ups the tempo and while still being a very doom metal song, manages to provide a respite from the constant crawl with some solid rock out moments and a very catchy riff that I’ve been humming to myself for a while now. The two songs from the debut single are both on the album albeit slightly reworked and a couple of minutes longer with “Quest” breaking off into a comparatively energetic section in the second half and “Forsaken Man” closing the album in an epic fashion.
“Misery Wizard” is old school American doom. Think, the crawl of St. Vitus occasionally moving towards a couple of rock out moments that bring Pentagram to mind. Three of the six songs on the album were previously available on the single and the split, and appear here in slightly different form and it’s these songs that really hold the album together along with “Adventurer.” The band is at its best when they experiment with tempos and use the lead guitar but too often they seem content to merely plod along with one riff going on and on and stretching into infinity. I think this album could have been a bit better with more attention paid to song dynamics and it feels like the band might have hurried into this album.
While there are four good songs here, the other two fail to really make any sort of impression and drift a bit aimlessly while accounting for more than twenty minutes of the music on this album. Overall, this is a decent debut and fans of the genre will find enough to like here but Pilgrim still has some ways to go before they’re considered essential.
- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Metal Blade
- Website: Pilgrim Bandcamp
- Band
- The Wizard: vocals, guitars
- Count Elric the Soothsayer: bass
- Krolg Splinterfist, Slayer of Men: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Astaroth
- 02. Misery Wizard
- 03. Quest
- 04. Masters of the Sky
- 05. Adventurer
- 06. Forsaken Man
