The one-man primordial deathdoom band CELESTIIAL slooowly drifts through an ethereal woodland terrain that's alive with the sounds of rain and chirping

birdsong, forming an ominous atmosphere that is very similiar to SKEPTICISM in it's stately lumbering, but CELESTIIAL is more organic and mystical, more like

a cross between those Finnish funeral masters and the fragile druidic doom-folk of Chet Scott's projects (ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS, RUHR HUNTER, SVART UGLE, etc).

Actually, as the album progresses, it loosens it's tethers to the doom form, mainly through the distant hiss of slowly pulsating cymbals and barely

discernable drums and the buried drone of the almost non-existant guitar. The dreamy death growls blanketed in reverb are similiarly distant and blurred,

while the woodland sounds are at the forefront, the grey haze of rainfall and wildlife sometimes obscuring the beautiful Windham Hill-style New Age string

and flute arrangements and heavier passages. That's not to say that CELESTIIAL isn't crushingly heavy, which it is...the heaviness here is a suffocating

ambient dread, a witnessing of the impermanent self surrounded by nature. Desolate North contains 8 tracks that work together as a single 45 minute

suite, and the album is definitely best absorbed in it's entirety. Highly recommended to followers of the funeral ambient of NORTT, the otherworldly ooze of

ESOTERIC and DISEMBOWELMENT, and the Glass Throat family of sylvan drones.