Once one of, if not the, leading figures in the American doom metal movement of the '80s, fairly stumbled into the next decade with their sixth full-length album, 1992's (Children of Doom), which found the original quartet of guitarist , bassist , and drummer fighting for their musical lives while breaking in new singer , formerly of Sweden's . Of course this would have been no easy task at the best of times, since the departure of longtime frontman a few years prior (to re-form his original band, ) had left a creative and charismatic void unlikely to be filled by anyone not named or . But coming as it did following a period of steadily building frustration for the group over their predicament as commercially inviable cult icons (respected but still literally starving to death), this challenge would prove simply too difficult for to surmount, as evidenced on Listening to its largely dull and unimaginative doom dirges ( etc.) is about as entertaining as a funeral procession stuck in traffic; indicating that the band may have reasoned that returning to the most basic, unadorned, and deliberate songwriting templates of their early years would help them find their way forward again. Instead, the dispiriting results suggest that without 's input, they simply had no other choice, since it was his replacement of ' founding original vocalist, , that ushered in the band's most prolific era in the first place. Indeed, even when the "new" finally shrugs off their somnolent mantle for the energetic and portions of and their atypical sense of urgency further exposes the emotional limitations of new boy 's glassy-eyed, deadpan delivery. Not surprisingly, he would not be invited back, as the band reunited with the aforementioned for their next and final album, , thus defining as an isolated chapter, widely accepted as the inspirational low of long career. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia