Metal Underground.com

Headed by Chuck Brown of The Gates of Slumber fame, Apostle of Solitude is a no-nonsense, old school doom metal band. Playing their own flavor of Sabbath doom, “Sincerest Misery” is a plodding album with lyrics about dismal-ness and despair. Though this album starts out with a ton of energy, it loses that energy about halfway through and doesn’t really pick it up again.

The riffage on this album is slow and crunchy, just as one would expect doom to be. Not all of it is particularly heavy and it never strays into the death/black territory. Sticking pretty close to the Sabbath mold, some parts work, while others do not. “Confess” is one of the good parts on this album. It’s the second song on the album and is a great one, featuring one of the only solos on the whole album. “A Slow Suicide” is one of the slowest songs on the album and utilizes a harrowing, downtuned riff. From there on, this album goes downhill.

The biggest problem that this album is just simply too long, clocking in at over an hour. “Last Tears” is a good example of this. The guitar work is great, but the song overall (along with most of the second half of the album) doesn’t feature a lot of transitions and gets very stale. “This Dustbowl Earth” is a southern sounding song, but also contains a strange spoken sample that simply does not work with the music; in fact, I thought some other program was playing it while I was listening to this album.

“Sincerest Misery (1,000 Days)” is apparently the album’s “epic,” clocking in at about fourteen minutes. Most of the time is not well filled and gets very boring. The final song, “Electric Funeral,” is a cover of the Sabbath classic. Played about two beats slower, it’s a well done cover, but doesn’t add much to the album as a whole.

I found myself getting rather bored near the end. Overall, Apostle of Solitude has the old school doom sound down. The music is simple, which can be a good thing, but doesn’t help how repetitive this album is. While “Sincerest Misery” is a well done effort and fits the genre solidly, it simply drags on for far too long for how simplistic the music is.