YOB
Our Raw Heart
Release Date: Jun 8, 2018
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Relapse Records
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Album Review: Our Raw Heart by YOB
Excellent, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 8.0/10
Mike Scheidt, the vocalist and guitar player for Oregon doom metal trio YOB, was hospitalized with diverticulitis early last year. In a recent Decibel cover story, he made the ailment sound pretty metal, likening it to a Chestburster wallowing inside him. But the experience--which nearly killed him--left Scheidt so changed that he wasn't sure, at first, if the band would continue.
Based on rating 4.0/5
Pain, frustration and healing with YOB... The past few years have been a whirlwind in YOB's career. While riding high on the momentum created by Clearing the Path to Ascend, front man Mike Scheidt went through life threatening issues with diverticulitis. Fortunately, after several surgeries (plus months of recovery), everything is back under control and he managed to ferociously return to the stage and ultimately, the recording studio.
Based on rating 8/10
YOB return with their eighth studio record Our Raw Heart; a culmination of loss and new beginnings, this record is a celebration of everything YOB. The album opens with "Ablaze" and "The Screen," which start right where their previous record left off. The songs are full of melodic vocals and punishing riffs that recall "In Our Blood" and "Unmask the Spectre" from Clearing the Path to Ascend. Even with the band becoming elder statesmen of the genre, they can still write heavy riffs with the best of them. This album really comes ….
Opinion: Excellent
Photo by Jimmy Hubbard Our Raw Heart by YOB The genres with which YOB is most closely identified, doom metal and stoner metal, resonate with the band's knuckle-dragger name. But their music increasingly challenges the haze of melancholia and befuddlement invoked by those labels (and some of us have a psychological allergy to the term "stoner metal"; you want to smoke up, have at it, but you don't get to claim whole swaths of sound). On their past several records, YOB have turned the ponderously dense, downtempo and disconsolate properties of doom toward spiritually transcendent thematic and aesthetic aims.
'Our Raw Heart'
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