Life sucks! No, really! Why bother? Let's end it here end now! What's the point of us humans anyway?

That could be your mood after subjecting yourself to an hour's worth of 'Cemetery Earth', the third album by Pennsylvania doomsters PALE DIVINE. Although they have been around for over a decade I have to be honest and confess this is the first thing I heard by them. But if this album is any indication I have to check out their earlier work as well. PALE DIVINE's sound is easily described; it's basically PENTAGRAM (singer Greg Diener even kind of sounds like Bobby Liebling) but with a more 80's metal feel. So no, originality is not PALE DIVINE's strongest point but that doesn't really matter since this is after all 'traditional doom metal'. No, PALE DIVINE's strong points are their riffs and the atmosphere of dreary hopelessness they establish.

From its rather gruesome cover (to me much more disturbing than the slapstick goriness of your average grindcore band) to the album's closing track with the apt title "The Conqueror Worm" this is nobody's idea of a party record. The best song here is the 10 minute long title track. Not since the days of SAINT VITUS have I heard anything this bleak. Like I said, it's 60+ minutes of gloom and doom may be a bit much if you're not in the right mood. But then on the other hand that may be the whole point. Anyway, I love the shit out of this record. Maybe I'm being hypocritical now. After all, it would make me very happy if I never heard a band ripping off PRIEST or MAIDEN's sound again, but I'm still a sucker for those bands that plunder the bloated corpse of BLACK SABBATH. Especially when it's done as well as this.

- Van Hoften

OFFICIAL SITE: www.paledivine.com

MP3 SOUND SCRAP: The Seventh Circle

RELATED ITEMS: "Thunder Perfect Mind", 2005 reissue