One of the most difficult things I’ve experienced as a reviewer over the last almost ten years is trying to convey what goes in my head when I hear something that leaves me torn. Sure, it’s ridiculously easy to gush about a fantastic record that many of you will either gleefully devour or just as gleefully shit on. It’s also not hard to communicate how terrible an album is with a 750-word limit. But when it comes to albums that give you mixed signals? That’s when the challenge presents itself, and the results tend to not be pretty for the band in question, the readers here, or even me when I look back years from now. So what am I trying to say here?
I greatly like Gateway’s vibe on the project’s second full-length, Galgendood. That murky, disgusting, viscous feel that one compares to the questionable liquid running out of a pierced trash bag is a tough thing to replicate. Sure, bands like Coffins and Sepulcros make that shit look like cake, but one small fuck-up and the whole thing goes to pot. Thankfully, sole proprietor Robin van Oyen captured that grotesquely juicy filth with relative ease. While solid on every instrument played, van Oyen’s strength is clearly in his riff-writing and guitar work, with opener “The Coexistence of Dismal Entities” far-and-away telegraphs his penchant for chunky riffs, gross pinch harmonics, and just enough melody to keep things from pole-vaulting into boredom. Almost every song afterward sees the juice get sicker, slimier, and filthier with each passing second.
Sadly, each progressive song afterward also reveals a fatal flaw in Galgendood: the unwanted stench of familiarity seeps through despite van Oyen’s best and earnest attempts. Plainly put, each riff, sick and well-written as they are (and they truly are both), gets driven into and through the earth. Of the five proper songs on here, only “The Coexistence of Dismal Entities” retains its memorability after playing the album, as the rest of it blends into one homogenous song. Nowhere is this more apparent than after the pointless instrumental “Nacthritueel (Evocation),” where the final three songs, “Scourged at Dawn,” “Bog Bodies Near the Humid Crypt,” and “Galgendood – Dagritueel – Duvelsput,” aren’t varied enough to break them apart. The first time I listened to that portion, I was wondering if and when “Scourged at Dawn” was going to end, only to find out I was on “Galgendood – Dagritueel- Duvelsput.”
And that leads to my final issue with Galgendood, and that’s in the songwriting, or rather the editing. Being the leader of a one-man band brings with it plenty of advantages. The inability to self-edit sure as shit isn’t one of them.1 While the riffs are solid as fuck, the way they’re pieced together could use some outside help, or at least a longer time in the assembly stage. It takes skill to write gross riffs, and van Oyen proves that in spades. To get them to remain memorable takes a lot of hard work.
That’s where I’m torn on Galgendood. On one hand, the inability to latch onto something memorable besides one song and a couple riffs here and there severely hurt its chances. On the other, though, I can’t knock van Oyen’s riff mastery, his command of visceral atmospheres, or the overall vibe that he’s trying to convey with Gateway, as this brand of death/doom is so within my wheelhouse that I can’t help but cheer him on. This might not have stuck the landing, but Galgendood definitely piqued my interest as to where van Oyen will take this project in the future. I’d be a fool not to.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: gatewaydeathdoom.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/gatewaydeathdoom
Releases Worldwide: July 21st, 2023
