Album Of The Week: Windhand Soma

The fourth song on Soma, the new album from the Richmond, Virginia doom metal band Windhand, is a quiet psych-folk lullaby called "Evergreen." It's a stark and sad and pretty song, one that approaches the whispery majesty of what the Philly drone-folk band Espers was doing a decade ago, and it positively drips with dark atmosphere. You can hear fingers squeaking on acoustic guitar songs all through the song, and singer Dorthia Cottrell seems to be singing along with herself in multitracked harmony, wailing astral incantations like she's mourning the death of the world. Because Windhand is, after all, a Virginia doom metal band, and because they can be just blisteringly loud when they want to be, you keep waiting for the hammer to drop, for the first fuzzed-to-death guitar note to thunder its way into the song. It never happens. The song sprawls on for seven minutes, never breaking its own spell, casting shadows on the wall of your soul the whole time. Things only get loud when the song is over -- and then, when that happens, they get loud.