PARAMAECIUM
Within the Ancient Forest CD JEWELCASE GOLD DISC

In 1995, some twenty-seven years ago, metal got established in every subgenre imaginable. One of those subgenres was doom metal, popularized by bands like Trouble, Pentagram, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Paradise Lost. To understand doom a bit more precariously, it was Candlemass that released an album in 1986 that took doom and threw classical influences and clean vocals into the blender. They named their album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus and, lo and behold, ‘epic doom’ became another subgenre.

Now back to the year 1995, it was a pivotal year for metal in spite of the Pacific Northwest riding the airwaves with alternative and grunge-glistened bands, which was not a bad thing necessarily, but it was overkill. Concurrently, in the metal purist community, bands like My Dying Bride and Anathema integrated doom with death metal, which abdicated the likes of Ozzy Osborne to be the Doris Day of metal. I mean, after My Dying Bride included the track The Sexuality of Bereavement as a bonus on their 1993 Turn Loose the Swans, it was game over. And that makes an appropriate segue for the band Paramaecium (not the easiest band name to spell, dang it!) to be introduced.

From Melbourne, Australia comes Andrew Tompkins, a singer and bass player, who formed Paramaecium with guitarist Jason De Ron and drummer Jayson Sherlock, the former drummer with Christian death metal initiators Mortification. Exhumed of the Earth was issued on the same label as Anathema, as well as Christian label R.E.X. Records. That album, a virtuoso of epic doom and death, was well received and is now a classic amongst doom metal enthusiasts.

Two years later Paramaecium released their second full length Within the Ancient Forest. R.E.X. Records was in the process of folding so the band signed to a small German label which received distribution from Nuclear Blast. Musically, Ancient Forest is more diverse, melodic and technical than Exhumed, and every bit as brilliant. The band brought in second guitarist Chris Burton for this recording, and the musical arrangements highlight this. The album was meant to accompany a book Tompkin’s penned, an old world fantasy, written allegorically in the thematic nature of Pilgrim’s Progress, about Tompkin’s spiritual journey. While that book is now as scarce as hen’s teeth, the lyrics, based upon the book, stand on their own.

Tracklist:
In Exordium
Song Of The Ancient
I Am Not Alive
The Grave, My Soul
Gone Is My Former Resolve
Of My Darkest Hour
Darkness Dies