ALBUM REVIEW: Echoes Of The Earth – Soothsayer

Despite existing since 2013, the Cork-based SOOTHSAYER have put out EPs and even a live album but a full-length debut had until now not made an appearance. This year sees them rectifying that with Echoes Of The Earth, a sprawling, epic affair that takes in sludge, death, doom and shamanic chanting across its fifty-plus minute runtime. But was it worth the eight year wait? 

The answer is, very simply, yes. Fringe opens the album with six minutes of droning chants before Outer Fringe crushes with the weight of aeons. While starting as a slow dirge, it picks up the pace with all the inevitability of an avalanche gathering speed as it descends the mountains. It’s raw and emotional, railing against human exploitation of the natural world and the death of entire ecosystems in the name of progress. While doom is often gloomy and melancholic, the sounds made by SOOTHSAYER are all rage and vengeance, though purposeful rather than indiscriminate howling. 

Unafraid to use atmosphere to their advantage, songs eschew the more formulaic ways of instrumentation. Instead the band opt to the sound of field recordings, chants and the wrath of nature they channel. Riffs are tar-thick, clawing their way out of the gloom, while the vocals are raw and sometimes unhinged such as the blackened rasps and howls of War of the Doves. 

Underpinning it all is a rhythm section that flows naturally with the music without ever falling out of lockstep with each other. The bass tone is gargantuan and rumbles like the movements of tectonic plates, while the drums drive songs forward with slow groove to furious blastbeats and everything in between.

SOOTHSAYER throw a curveball in fourth track Cities of Smoke that’s more melodic than the other tracks here, but one that still retains the hallmarks of their sound and the album itself. It acts as a pivotal point between the halves of the album, with the final two songs being the longest here and also the most expansive and epic in their scope, which is quite something given what’s come before. Six of Nothing begins sedately before gradually bringing its arsenal to bear, while True North, sitting at just over twelve minutes, again opens more minimally with spoken word and echoing guitar before shifting gear into a mid-paced sludgy dirge. 

What Echoes Of The Earth isn’t, is easy listening. What it is, however, is a mind-bending, atmospheric and deliriously heavy diatribe against the destruction and exploitation of the natural world. Melding the monolithic sounds of doom with sludge, death metal and hefty doses of atmosphere, SOOTHSAYER have crafted a debut well worth the eight-year wait that commands attention even with such a crowded underground rife with excellence. 

Rating: 8/10

Echoes Of The Earth is set for release on April 9th via Transcending Obscurity Records. 

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