Perhaps the whole idea of blending doom metal and death growls have never been to create something shocking, surprising or “new” but they do tend to look for an “angry melancholy” a sort of frustration in a valley of sweet sounds that are inevitably surrounded by evil with the introduction of deep male growls; and all this can and is achieved in this album by this Lebanese band, but they lack that particular ingredient that makes an album memorable, there are not enough hooks or segments that go beyond the norm created by other big names of the genre (Anathema, early Katatonia, My Dying Bride etc, etc…).

The female vocals of Sabine Hamad are beautiful, a bit rough sometimes but still quite good and mood setting as they guide each song to a deeper sorrow without loosing energy, she pretty much sets the whole sweet melancholy tune of the entire record, always been back up by a decent keyboard and a surprisingly fast and devilish death growl.

Kimaera knows how to play this style, there is no question about that, they can manage the tempo in every single song in order to create that rollercoaster of feelings and riffs that eventually makes their doom/death work, the amount of changes between angry death and the introductions of Hamad’s vocals segments are nicely timed and they fit the gloomy guitars perfectly.

The biggest or perhaps the single problem that doesn’t really lets “Ebony Veiled” take flight is a simple issue, they needed a more representative song for the album, don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating for a pop friendly track here, I’m just saying that if they had a single “hook song” this album could have gone places; despite that, there is some good, talented doom in here, so check them out.