By ship, after a taxing number of years at sea we arrive upon the old world dioramic scene set by folken progressive rock/doom metal act Yaaroth with dread for the coming discomfort, settlement in a strange land. Squinting against the sepia-toned backlight of an unwell sun, the inhabitants of the pier are warped by our salted eyelids into skittering rats. Tunneling, burrowing, unkempt and rough creatures milling away at communal obligations with the angle of the opportunist set permanently in their brows. Yet it isn’t our unwelcoming party that interests ‘The Man in the Wood‘ so much as the hidden primal force explored through bacchic tales of thy narrator et dramatist, presenting weirding folk tales that’d foreshadow impending hallucino-faustian happenings within an abundant setting. Today a long untended ambition finally rests as a complete thought, an idiosyncratic ‘epic’ torn from the eclectic/electric unmolded mindset of the early seventies where oaken progressive folk rock, heavy psychedelic rock and the post-industrial dread of heavy metal meet dark European fantasy lore. Imperfect, outrageous, and impossibly entranced by its own lunacy this’ll be an album specifically for those aching for the unhinged wonderment studded within the forever-ignored forgotten past of heavy progressive rock interpreted by way of classic doom metal’s fascinating gaze.

Yaaroth is the natural evolution, or, the general reprisal and reskinning of Yarrow, a progressive doom metal band formed when musician/artist Dan Bell was based out of Rochester, New York in the early 2010’s. That original band puttered around for a few years until eventually releasing the outcome of their efforts as a demo (‘The Subterranean Stench‘) circa 2015. As far as I know those recordings featured Bell on vocals, bass, and guitars with drummer Samuel Nells and those sessions provide more than the basis for ‘The Man in the Wood‘ as all three of those pieces have been reworked or seemingly retooled with different mixing alongside one additional song not originally included (“They Seek Baryba”) which features session drums from Will Hoback. The production values on this revived and now completed version of the release are entirely different where they’ve dialed the room size up by an exponent, put a too crisp crystal-shattering loudness to the drum recordings and emphasized Bell‘s vocals more in line with the distant/lo-fi feeling of obscure early progressive rock.

The homebrewed render and elaborate folk, prog, and proto-heavy/doom metal feeling of the album’s four neatly arranged longform pieces wears its influences proudly though they’re all a bit obscure beyond a bit of early Sabbath/Candlemass appeal to some of the rhythms. Bell’s vocals have a bit of starry-eyed ‘Goodbye And‘-era Tim Buckley to their timbre and a shade of the Morrison-esque crooning gloom of Tony Hill on the first two High Tide albums (‘Sea Shanties‘ is a personal all-time favorite) depending on the piece and these references also apply to the dream-like heavy rock/70’s metal feeling of the album’s rhythms and production values. The logical place to go with this in mind is somewhere between the eerie ancient metal feeling of Legend‘s ‘From the Fjords‘ but coming with the folkish prog-rock reverence of Garden of Worm‘s ‘Idle Stones‘. It is the sort of sound that fans of more doom-oriented progressive acts like Space God Ritual and Blizaro should appreciate but the sound design isn’t as stylized toward a modern doom metal fidelity, ‘The Man in the Wood‘ sounds ancient and impossibly obscure to the point that it’ll likely prove even more of an acquired taste than anything I could compare its experience with.

Chances are if the drum sound doesn’t scare you off of opener “Subterranean Stench” immediately the mid-80’s epic doom metal set prose from Bell‘s end-phrase vibrato will have to serve enough charm to win you over. In my case it was an easy induction by way of a distinct-yet-familiar sound. Though the vocals and the story they tell quickly directs the experience Bell‘s bass guitar playing exercises just as much expressive liberty, a foundational tone with a strong voice beneath the more standard doom shamble of the guitar work. The song itself has a different effect compared to its original version, the obscured distance created by the render emphasize the mystery unfolding and the disgusted tone of the narrator as it builds. The major heat of the album and the big song overall is arguably “God of Panic”, a well-chosen single where we get the incredible range from the vocal work as it builds to a wailing peak around ~7:30 minutes in, eventually growling out of the song. There is a very strong The Bacchae essence running through this song and performance as the dance of the riffs intensifies within its middle third, and to the point that the spectacle of performance had me missing the virtuosic tumbling of the bass guitar beneath once again. That sort of Dionysian madness is rare enough that I still find myself obsessed with this song and the slowly cresting moments it brings. That’d naturally conclude as Side A, though as far as I know this is a CD only release to start.

Over on the second half we find the new yet essential addition of the aforementioned “They Seek Baryba” setting a far more sombre mood, dialing back to sluggish 70’s-set doom with a glowing reprieve separating its first and second thirds. If we are to consider ‘The Man in the Wood‘ as a full album experience and not pieces to chop apart this is the necessary emotional spacing, a chapter in limbo between the pyre of “God of Panic” and the bard-like prog-rock elevator down that is the 13+ minute closer “Cassap”. At this point you’ll have to have bought into the unique range of vocal expression from Bell, there is no getting around it as the major feature of the whole event yet I didn’t find this ever reached too far outside of the stoic, folken progressive doom metal tradition the album embodies. If you’ve enjoyed the evolution of bands like Purification as much as I have, you’ll likely “get” it just as well here. Though the suggested “Side B” here is just as vital to the greater organism here, and the successful integration of “They Seek Baryba” is key to the whole thing feeling fleshed out, I’d definitely found myself still favoring the first couple of songs as I returned to the full listen over repeatedly.

Squares need not apply. — That’d be an even more important takeaway, Yaaroth‘s work hit me in waves just as a personal underground metal record should. First its personality read strong, then the expression of performances built some fealty toward the emotional impound of it all before the technical weave of its works gave it knots and nooks of bliss to appreciate in successive listens. It grew from challenging sojourn into surreal headspace toward a very classic, weirding heavy psychedelic/progressive rock influenced doom statement that owns the its oddness rather than shoves it into the periphery. There is no place for the listener to hide from the Pan dancing with its flute in the woods, as such this record will appeal to folks who are prone to stare and seep into the strange and unknown rather than be repulsed by it. Any significant points I could take off from the rubric are for the sake of the production values being charming yet decidedly harsh (the drums mostly, but also peaking sounds on “Cassap”) in a few key instances which keep this record from being a great work of finessed nostalgia, a molding together of many ancient ideals into something curious, enchanting in its performative depth. A high recommendation.

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