First things first, an explanation is in order. MÜL is the project of one Knut Farstad, and it is extreme doom metal. That genre tag could be enough to scare some people away, but they are weak and should be laughed at. This album is not released on cd, but if you ask Knut nicely, I'm sure he'll either sell you a burned copy or allow you to hear his music in digital form. Of course, some contact information would be helpful. You can find him many times on Soulseek under the name dru_gin or on #ssmt on Forestnet under the name knut.

Now that all these formalities are out of the way, it is time for the meat of this review. This album is very long, over an hour in fact. Of course, since it consists of only five songs, you can guess that they are going to be very long. With the further information that one of them is less than four minutes, you'd be correct in assuming the other songs are very long. The album kicks off with Born, which runs the gamut from droning, screaming doom similar to Esoteric to more ambient piano and electronic sections. Given it's over 13 minute length, it has room to expand. And boy does it. These guitars will send your soul to Hell and the vocals will finish the job. This is not happy music, but that's to be expected (this is doom metal after all).

Lights On is a much shorter song, but it is only an acoustic break from the repeated skullfucking of which the rest of the album consists. Grow continues where Born left off, with a very similar atmosphere of pure constricting doom. It is also my favorite song on this release, running almost 20 minutes in its entirety. The vocals range from deep growls to almost clean sounding vocals, all while the guitars twist and intertwine diabolically and the drums plod endlessly. Do not expect blastbeats or fast sections, this is slow as fuck, like doom metal should be.

The songs flow sinisterly, with a key point being the mostly instrumental section of Grow. Around 6 minutes into the song, a whisper enters the mix, instantly changing the song from a smooth melodic guitar section to a churning morass of pure doom that slowly introduces keyboards and more and more layers onto the song until it seems like your brain will collapse under the beatings. Just when you think it is too much, the song lets up into a chugging section while dark ambient sounds filter between the guitars. This keeps speeding up until the fastest section of the album appears, but it does not last long.

Many surprises abound in this album, including steel drums and even soothing passages surrounded by some of the most bleak and demanding music you could hear. Knut certainly understands what makes good doom metal, in the same tradition as such bands as Esoteric, Evoken, and Skepticism. Earlier MÜL releases were very similar, but were primarily instrumental. This album also features a bigger emphasis on instrumentation instead of vocals, but it actually has vocals on it, separating it from earlier releases. Of course, the vocals themselves are pretty illegible, since they mostly consist of very low-pitched growls, but that is certainly not a problem.

If you like extreme doom metal at all, you owe it to yourself to hunt out MÜL. You won't be disappointed. Instead, you will probably find yourself in a drugged haze living out your worst nightmare, in a very good way. Bring on the extreme doom; we need more bands like MÜL to offset the weaker doom of which quite a bit of the scene consists. If the only exposure to doom metal that you've heard is bands like My Dying Bride and Anathema, you haven't heard anything yet. Finally, an album can be added to the upper echelon of extreme doom, fitting snugly besides Skepticism's Lead and Aether and Esoteric's The Pernicious Enigma. (4.5/5)