Year: 2020
Total Time: 1:03:57
Label: Napalm Records

      The German quartet from Heidelberg, AHAB, were founded in 2004 and since then they have been discovering deep wild seas, their secrets and the hidden pain, the sailors’ passions, the calm before the storm, the melancholy and the solitude, the beauty within the pessimism. Ahab was the name of Pequod’s whaler ship captain, whose obsession for the hunt of the great white whale Moby Dick can be read in the book of the same name by Herman Melville. So it was kind of fatal for AHAB to focus on this topic and be declared as Nautical Doom pioneers.

     In 2017 AHAB performed live in Deathrow Festival in Jena (whose football team is crawling at the low ranks of the German Third Division) and chose to record 5 songs for their first live recording. All of them were first heard in 2006 debut “The Call Of The Wretched Sea”, a masterpiece of Funeral Doom. “Live Prey” begins with “Below The Sun”, with an ultra slow funeral riffing and a seeping intensity as it is captured on stage. But if there is one song that condenses all the characteristics of  Funeral Doom, that is “Old Thunder”, an anthem and ode to pessimism and despair. A song that is being built riff by riff and growing up decisively into something monstrous, supported by the outrageous vocals and screams of Daniel Droste to reach the AHAB’s magnum opus, the almost 17minute “Hunt”, an herculean effort, a Sisyphean dramatic torture, a heavily soaked through atmosphere that hypnotizes the audience, especially the ones in the front rows.

      “Live Prey” is not to be heard in a summer noon listening. You should listen to it strictly after midnight on the balcony or terrace with full dedication. A record that is essential for every Doom Black listener and of course for every AHAB fan. Drown yourselves into the bottomless oblivion of the deep wild seas.

Rating: N/A
Editor: Dimos Karadimos
Related Link: AHAB – Official Page