ALBUM REVIEW: Yob, "Our Raw Heart"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 08/06/2018

Label: Relapse Records

Clever arrangement, subtlety over volume and a clear-eyed grasp of honing an atmosphere make these cuts inviting in myriad ways. They're the kind of songs that give you a front-row seat for Yob's past meeting its future, and you cannot help but be transfixed.

“Our Raw Heart”CD//CS//DD//2LP track listing:

1). Ablaze

2). The Screen

3). In Reverie

4). Lungs Reach

5). Beauty In Falling Leaves

6). Original Face

7). Our Raw Heart

                     

The Review:

Yob has emerged as perhaps doom's most popular band of the moment, though the band's presence has hardly been momentary. Since 2002's "Elaborations of Carbon," the Eugene, Oregon-based collective have stoked a passionate fan base. Its albums have gotten progressively stronger as Yob's sound has matured. "The Illusion of Motion," released by Metal Blade in 2004, and "The Unreal Never Lived" offered up the following year, were considered watermarks for the group. Yob's 2006 breakup did not last too long. Its return in the form of"The Great Cessation" was greeted with much praise for a deeper, denser aural than ever before.

And so it has gone. Solid but infrequent albums and lots of live performances became an unfortunate drought of about four years. "Clearing the Path to Ascend" in 2014 was a stunning record, one that vaulted Yob even higher. Without question, the band has been consistent in its growth and overall quality. "…Ascend" helped the group's mythos only expand.

"Our Raw Heart," has already won plaudits from across the spectrum. For good reason. Yob's return is magnificent. Yet it's outstanding not because it's heavy. It is, somewhat, but "Our Raw Heart" succeeds because it is visionary, emotional and more innovative than virtually every single one of Yob's contemporaries. It's a great album because it sounds wholly atypical of what you think of metal, yet it is quintessentially metal.

Yob's newest is influenced by Mike Scheidt's brush with death in 2017. He nearly succumbed to an infection created by complications related to other problems, but it is not the first time the band's spiritual leader has looked over the abyss with his tribe. Fans of "…Ascend" and other albums may have most loved Scheidt's vulnerability, and his examination of his own mental health issues and other struggles in his songwriting and performances. Thus it is fitting that "Our Raw Heart" would beckon this tattered brother- and sisterhood into Scheidt's world one more time. And, as you may have heard on "The Screen," released just before the album, there's going to be pain. "Sensing old death, sharing no house with it," Scheidt muses. "In moments obscure, that which endures."

That’s part about being somewhat heavy? Truth be told, Yob will never be a pop band and are not abandoning the wall of sound the band so masterfully creates. Those tense moments as in "The Screen" (tightly wound in its own right, surely) are paired with all-out harsher tracks such as "In Reverie," with some of the cascading, volume-notched heavy music you will hear in a minute. "Original Face" in another one of those songs certain to remind you how hard Yob can bring its music, and why their creativity in doing it is so revered. Clever arrangement, subtlety over volume and a clear-eyed grasp of honing an atmosphere make these cuts inviting in myriad ways. They're the kind of songs that give you a front-row seat for Yob'spast meeting its future, and you cannot help but be transfixed.

What may end up etched in your own heart, however, are the more delicate, complex songs. "Lungs Reach" lolls gently out of the mist, as wisps of guitar and then that challenging voice come for you. "Beauty in Falling Leaves" glances by with affirmative chords that lead you to a valley of despondent rhythms, until it soars with Scheidt's inimitable vocal. By the time the album closes with the title track, a 14-minute cohesive yet inescapably macabre centerpiece, you learn slowly that this is why Yob has fashioned an arc of almost mythological proportions. Greater than most, more dynamic than more, "Our Raw Heart" is what makes metal you cannot but love.

“Our Raw Heart”is available here

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