This is by far the weirdest thing we�ve heard from the up and coming Firedoom label (an offshoot of Finland�s Firebox Records). Aarni�s art-damaged, lo-fi avant-doom can only barely be described as �metal�, as these space cadets formulate a psychedelic and thoroughly weird doom/psych/folk mutation with ample amounts of acoustic instrumentals and ambient keyboards floating around a bizarre jazzy atmosphere that�s pretty much unlike anything I�ve ever heard, a bizarre brand of spacey n� pastoral instrumental folk with lots of flute and other �woodsy� instruments, with weirdly delicate, shambling doom metal dirges and eerie soundscapes mixed in with a singer who sounds sort of like a narcoleptic Michael Gira. Imagine the folksy doom of Agalloch mixed with drug-addled synth ambience and the gloomy metal of Solstice and Amorphis. Or Skepticism meeting Deinonychus at a folk/prog festival. Or early My Dying Bride if they were a psych-folk/noise group with Doors-style hammond keyboards. Or Mr. Bungle�s LSD-addled, Lovecraft-obsessed little brother playing Sisters Of Mercy and Katatonia and Jethro Tull covers all at the same time while busting out ridiculous Joe Satriani-style power metal leads. It�s that fucked. There are also parts that remind me of Maudlin Of The Well, but this is far more lysergic than that outfit ever was. Bathos delivers nine tracks in 65 minutes, and the songs flow in and out of each other with little in the way of traditional rock structure, making this album more of a single organic piece of music that has been separated into chapters. Vocals, when they appear (the bulk of the album is instrumental) range from baritone chanting, clean crooning and strange robotic moaning, and occasional death roars or blackened rasps, and the lyrics are in various languages (Finnish of course, but also French, English, Latin, Swedish, and even ancient Egyptian! ), which further amplifies the dreamlike weirdness of the album. Despite all of these different elements being combined together, the arrangements and instrumentation are quite spare and efficient, a sort of futuristic, quasi-post-rock doomjazzfolk mutation�.pretty otherworldly-sounding stuff. There�s additional bonus tracks from their 2001 demo that includes an off-the-wall cover of Slayer�s �Dead Skin Mask�. Weird stuff.