A good visual can really draw you in way quicker than any piece of music if you’re a foolish person like me that judges an album based on the cover art before even listening to anything the work has to offer. It’s a terrible habit that I have tremendous trouble getting rid of, but I’d be lying if I said it never led me to great albums before. Tonight, that habit has served me well yet again as it’s with Elder Druid’s brand new album that we get some tasteful doom from a country we simply don’t hear a lot of metal from.

Before now, it’s really only been Soothsayer that has been the only Irish band that I’ve held any sort of interest in and that goes double for Irish doom even if there’s not many in that scene to begin. But, like many things, that doesn’t mean that landscape isn’t filled with quality as we can see with Elder Druid’s brand new effort that really knows how to floor the listener almost right off the batter to deliver something that’s as tasty as it is unapologetically heavy. Without mixing in too many melodies such that “Golgotha” loses itself in its own desire to be attractive to the masses, plenty of what’s poured into this record is absolutely delectable as Elder Druid does not let a single shred of their power go to waste as they dominate from left to right with tremendous power and a real purpose to melt your very bones by the end of the final track. It’s a crushing sound that any fan of doom has heard before in some sort of capacity, but that doesn’t take away a single ounce of what Elder Druid brings to the table with this release such that it’s with each track that they bring forth we see another glorious piece of their heavy creation that the listener just cannot help but get sucked into the by the of the first track alone. Then it’s with the remainder of “Golgotha” that this group carves out our graves from solid bedrock to lay us down into blissful darkness by the time the final note fades into the dark.

There will always be an insurmountable amount of doom metal out there for us to possibly eat up as we do our best to sift through it all, but it’s every now and then that something rises to the surface that we just can’t ignore, and it goes without saying that Elder Druid is definitely one of them. Without any sort of hesitation or breaking a single sweat, it’s with “Golgotha” that this Irish act shows us what they’re made of with their second full-length record, and it promises only further greatness in the future.

LISTEN to “Golgotha” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Elder Druid on Facebook here.