Spirited Migration is album one from this thunderous duo from Florida, who manage to create a monolithic din in spite of their minimal guitar and drums lineup. Credit that fullness and weight of sound to the busy, continually shifting drumming of Rob Shaffer (formerly of tech-deathmetallers Into The Moat) and the lush chord arrangements and monstrous downtuned riffs of guitarist and singer Stevie Floyd, who combined create a kind of proggy death-doom, a baroque atmosperic sludge that has bits of Isis, old-school death metal, prog rock and psychedelia all melted together into the dark, imaginative crush of Dark Castle. It should also be noted that I didn't realize that Stevie Floyd is actually a girl until I read an interview with the band recently, such is the gutteral deepness of her death growling, and her bestial bellows give any death metal dude a run for his money. Floyd's guitar playing is a big part of Dark Castle's sound, sometimes digging into monolithic death-doom, but largely filling their sound with complex chords, virtuosic classical guitar runs and eerie King Crimson-esque arpeggios (check out the instrumental title track for a stunning bit of acoustic brainmelt) that surround the thicker descending doom riffs which wind through their complex arrangements. Though Shaffer is no slouch, his complex beats adding much of the proggy feel here, along with some tastefully layered synths that emerge as massive black kosmiche bass-drones on "A Depth Returns" and "Weather The Storm". That latter track is one of the spaciest songs on the album, an instrumental piece that drifts through fields of heavily-delayed guitar and 70's-style synths. Fans of Yob's latest will dig the fusion of ultra-crushing doom and heavily textural psychedelia on A Spirited Migration, and likewise fits in nicely next to the psychedelic sludge/doom of bands like Zoroaster and At A Loss labelmates Minsk, Rwake, and Deadbird.