Rose Kemp – Golden Shroud

It’s fair to say Rose Kemp is carving a distinctive niche for herself. The daughter of Steeleye Span members Rick Kemp and Maddy Prior, her vocal style betrays a reverence for the English folk-rock tradition; but on Golden Shroud, that approach is married with some seriously sludgy doom metal. Comprising just three epic compositions, the album is a confident and distinctive contribution to the post-metal world, drawing unexpected parallels between English folk mysticism and black metal imagery.

At times, the music shudders to an almost Sunn O)))-like stasis, with Kemp’s mesmerising vocals drifting high above the soupy distortion; at others, there is a more Neurosis-like dynamic at work, complex but slow-burning. What is perhaps most impressive are the song structures, which progress with ominous deliberation from delicate, sparse vocal harmonies to crescendos of bruising noise. In Kemp’s hands, doom-folk makes a lot more sense than you might expect. [Sam Wiseman]