Published: December 4, 2015

This week's reviews begin in Spain, where doom metallers Womb have unleashed their first record Deception Through Your Lies, a remarkable, beautiful debut. It's dark and aggressive but also very crisp, even catchy in some places as it flirts with a kind of slow-motion death metal. Something I've come to love about doom is the way vocals become a mere part of a bigger, more complex composition. Womb have achieved that.

The album begins with the expansive and ethereal 'Echoes Of Our Scars', which is as doomy as it gets: slow, tense and gloomy as hell. 'Ends' picks up the pace just ever so slightly but loses none of the vicious atmospherics. I could get lost in 'March' for hours and 'Equidistant', released last year, is even more spaced out. In truth, these aren't really songs. They seem to merge into one, long piece. And what a piece it is.