But 7 years after Phobiate and apparently riddled with a 3 years of recording/production issues, the UK duo is back with their third album, Ónkos (tumor or lump?), and they have leaned even further into the murkier, doomier side of their sound that has been present on prior efforts but fully dialed in here as the 43 minute album is only 2, 20+ minute songs, “Mount Morphine” and “The Ever Aftermath”.

There is still a massive HM2 buzz in the guitar tone, but it mostly sounds like a 45rpm single being played at 33rpm. At times, it’s truly devastating, especially when the band delivers the slower, doomier riffs, which are littered in both tracks as well as standard Swe-death canters, short-lived blasts, and even some subtle keyboards and discordant black-ish metal moments.

But it’s the slower, lumbering moments within the two tracks that get my attention. I mean, the last third of “Mount Morphine” (minus the atmospheric final few moments) is simply crushing, and the middle of “The Ever Aftermath” is the same. That all said, everything else is just ‘there’, the canters, blasts, and atmospherics don’t really stick with me or make the 2 songs particularly impactful or memorable. And there are several minutes of wasted music that’s just ‘atmosphere’, which are fine if they work to make the entire song better, not just to end the song with a couple of minutes of mood.

Ultimately, I came away a bit let down by Ónkos, bored at times, even, especially considering the 7-year wait, and all we got were 2 songs and maybe about 30 minutes of real music. But it does have some moments buried away in there. That said, I’m giving the debut from Japan’s Heteropsy, a lot more attention, and it’s a very similar style and sound.

The backbone of Binah‘s tone and sound is rooted in Entombed, Dismember and Carnage (as well as some of the Finnish bands like Corpsessed,  Slugathor, Desecresy and Funebre),and they are armed with the most lethal, murky, mid-range Stockholm guitar sound I’ve heard since Clandestine or Dismember‘s Pieces EP. There’s also a lot of Autopsy and some some thick Incantation/Disma hues by way of a thick doomy musk and crawl and the cavernous distant vocals.  In fact, there’s a vague doom/death vibe (do I detect some nods to Lost Paradise ?) to Binah that almost takes them out of the Stockholm worship genre, as much of the material is a thick, oozing lurch, if only for that guitar tone. Folks, the guitar tone (courtesy of Darksound Studio in Wolverhampton) is simply destructive – it’s not a crystal clear take on the tone a la Entrails, but a dirty, cavernous, stupidly hefty take on the the classic tone. And it’s helped by oodles of great slimy riffs and sickening, classic ’90s atmospheres.

“Into the Psychomanteum” sets the mood with a great old-school atmospheric intro before “Morbid Obumbration” erupts from the speakers, demanding your attention and that the volume switch be cranked all the way, even though your speakers or headphones may shatter in surrender. Delicate, haunting keys back the rumbling opening bars of muddy, earthy menace as the track eases the album into view. “A New Rotten Dawn” has the same initial mood and pace, but after a few bars, Binah show that they can blast with the best of them before ending with a classic Entombed mid-range canter. The Lost Paradise vibe is heavy (literally and figuratively) to start “The Emissary” before a rumbling runaway train Bolt Thrower-ish pace kicks in, showing Binah‘s homegrown influences are as big as their Swedish ones, and the song’s mid-length rumble is to die for.

Then the album takes a bit of a tangent into more savage realms as the duo of “Absorption into the Unearthly” and blustery instrumental “Eminence of the Somber” are the album’s most direct, short and brutal tracks. They could be long-lost Nihilist tracks, mostly forsaking anything doomy or atmospheric for an all-out shredder. However, the 7 + minute title track lumbers into view next, with a menacing, oppressive gait that never gets above a suffocating lope except for an explosive final minute. “Dissolution” initially starts with an urgency of the aforementioned two faster tracks but some melodies, grooves and keyboards slither into the mix. More epic sludgy doom arises for the monstrous “Crepuscular Transcendence,” which as the penultimate track before the outro (“Buried Baptistry”), cements the album and the band as a full-on fucking beast in the genre.

The great thing about the album is that it has some appeal to fans of all of the bands I listed above – it’s not just another pure retro-Stockholm homage or forced retro Incantation-worshipping affair.  It melds both into a vast doomy, death metal mutant of a record that’s going to be hard to pry from my number one album of 2012 slot at the end of the year.