Band:	Eulen
Album:	Mother Tree
Style:	Black metal, Doom metal
Release date:	October 2011

01. A Cold New Day
02. First Snow
03. Desolate House
04. This Old Hearth
05. Graveroom
06. Dunes
07. Clouds
08. Mother Tree

Eulen are on a roll, their first recording ever, the Enlightened split with Syrian black metallers Despair (SYR), gets nominated in the 2011 Metal Storm Awards for Clandestine Cut of the Year. That's cool. What's even cooler is they dropped their first full-length back in October, and it's a supremely awesome way to not only follow up, but to build on their impressive first recording.

For those of you who didn't tune into Clandestine Cuts #8, you know, back before you they went all mainstream with a full-length n' shit, Eulen is some dark stuff. Not really evil, just dark, cold sadness. It's a kind of black & doom hybrid, slow, mellow, and very melancholy. One track, "Desolate House" sees them break into some typical blast-beat driven black metal, but for the most part they stick to eerie sorrow, doomy slowness, and even a few post- elements find their way in with some subtlety. It's an interesting mix of delicate melodies and gritty, raw black metal riffing, everything just seems to fit right.

The production is kind of a killer on this one at times. It's got the right amount of rawness to it, that's for sure, and it does help build the hopeless atmosphere they are undoubtedly going for, but the pitfall is the sort of "up close" feel to the whole thing. That works well when laying down the melodies, but it makes the rhythm guitars just sound a little overwhelming, and not in a good way. If this album had, say, the same production values as something like Wolves In The Throne Room, this would an absolutely top-notch album. All things considered, hats should be tipped to these guys, it's obviously a DIY album, so it's unfair to complain to much about specificity of production values, as they did manage to record their sound appropriately with considerable success, even if it isn't perfect.

All nit-picking aside, Eulen have a solidly depressing album here, certainly worth a listen if you like feeling like crap (in a good way!)