Ahab - The Divinity of Oceans

The Divinity of Oceans (Napalm, 2009) is a remarkable album about a remarkable subject: the sinking of the American whaleship Essex in 1820. (A book about the event inspired Moby Dick, which inspired Ahab‘s first album, The Call of the Wretched Sea, as well as Mastodon’s Leviathan.) After a whale rammed the ship and sank it, its sailors escaped onto lifeboats. Eventually the sailors resorted to cannibalism, including the ship’s captain eating his own cousin. The album cover is Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, which depicts a similar event. In 1816 the French warship Méduse sank; a raft dispatched from the wreck initially had about 150 occupants, but had 15 two weeks later. Cannibalism was also involved.

The Divinity of Oceans

Ahab’s take on these topics isn’t as stormy as their album covers. Their doom metal feels more like a sorrowful recollection than in-the-moment reportage. Like its predecessor, The Divinity of Oceans is subtle and melancholic. However, it offers greater contrasts. Low-key singing is part of the mix now. Clean tones sparkle like faraway beacons. These elements add depth to riffing that suggests a slowed-down Morbid Angel or Nile. Everything moves deliberately. It’s interesting to hear such a massive interpretation of the subject matter. For isolation and starvation, something thin and raw like black metal might be more appropriate. But panning across a scene can hit as hard as a close-up shot. Photographs of battlefields strewn with corpses are haunting in perpetuity. Ahab have the same effect.

– Cosmo Lee

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