[Review] Cosmic Plunge - Dealing With The Harvester

Cosmic Plunge - Dealing With The Harvester (review on downtuned magazine)
It's been four years since Cosmic Plunge released their debut "Wanderers on The Face of The Earth" (read review here) and the doomsters from Heraklion, Crete are now back with their sophomore album "Dealing With The Harverster".

If you've never listened to Cosmic Plunge before then get ready for some traditional doom, heavy and slow, full of riffs and with vocals that flirt with heavy metal aesthetics. And maybe you should first give a listen to their debut which is definitely a worthy precursor of this one.

In case you already are familiar with Cosmic Plunge then get ready for a very filling experience, especially if you already were font of their debut... and also get ready for something much darker and a little bit heavier.

When Mick (guitar) sent me the album a while ago, he told me: "turn the volume up and read the lyrics while listening" . I devoutly followed his suggestion and just a little while after I started listening and reading the lyrics I remembered that the band, in an older mini-interview on Downtuned Magazine had stated regarding their lyrics:
"Generally we like to use opposite notions in our lyrics such as death and life, love and hate, mirth and sorrow, faith and disbelief combined in stories of mythical content and characters."
which is generally true... but inside this album although I can spot, in large quantites, all the above notions, mirth is not one of them -maybe there is a tiny-little exception on March of Crows, maybe- and I am not mentioning this as a flaw. The lyrics are in complete harmony with the music and they are really capable of creating a series of powerfull images in your head. While Jim's idiosyncratic voice manages to embellish those images with powerful emotions, often having a tragic tone to his voice as stories about loss, sorrow, death, vengeance, of filthy priests and mythic gods, are unfolding as the album advances from one track to the other.
Images of that sort can also be found on the album's terrific artwork, and in order to make a connection with me previous comment about 'mirth': well... mirth is not something that a listener would expect to find in an album that is titled "Dealing With the Harverster" and having this kind of artwork:
Cosmic Plunge - Dealing With The Harvester front artwork Cosmic Plunge - Dealing With The Harvester back artwork Cosmic Plunge - Dealing With The Harvester inside artwork Cosmic Plunge - Dealing With The Harvester digipack

With a duration of 41 minutes in total and being a generally slow album, (with 'March of Crows' being a small exception) Cosmic Plunge's second release is an album which continues to build on the strong foundation that their first one has set and that will be pleasing the fans of trad doom and may sound quite appealing to those that enjoy stoner-doom as it lacks no riffs and fuzzy atmosphere.
A very powerful, non pretentious and decent doom release from one of the most humble and devoted bands of the local scene.
"Dealing With the Harverster" will be released in digipack and vinyl format soon after 2019 passes our doorstep.

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