Every review I've seen of this mentions how terribly the cover art for either version fits the content, and this one will be no different. I understand what they were going for conceptually, but it's just a bad choice for a doom metal album.
The band doesn't make any huge missteps but I found this CD to be underwhelming and ultimately kind of disappointing. It's just straight up doom, with no stoner/fuzz influences, and it's not even terribly Sabbathy, except perhaps for the minimalist "Letting Go of the Wheel." Unfortunately, many of the songs are way too long without having quality content to justify it--the songwriting and riffage is way below any of the classic '80s or '90s doom bands. It's kind of absurd to me to see people favorably comparing this to prime '80s Candlemass when it doesn't even reach Count Raven levels. At times I'm reminded of a more simplistic version of the later Solitude Aeturnus albums. There is some good material here, like "Frontiers of Pain" and its nice soloing or "Hunter Sick Rapture," but the album didn't rise above being something somewhat pleasant to listen to in the background. There's just too many 7+ min. songs to wade through. The vocalist isn't that bad of a singer on a technical level, and I got used to him as the album went on, but there's something about him I can't quite put my finger on that isn't the best fit with doom metal. Too clean and not mournful enough, perhaps?
I happened to get the North American version, which has different bonus cover songs from the European pressing...They're better than I thought but I really want to hear the Thin Lizzy and Celtic Frost covers from the Euro version now. The cover of The Obsessed's "Streetside" is done very faithfully, although it's a bit wasted on me since I much prefer the albums that came before The Church Within. The Misfits' "Astro Zombies" cover is quite fun, even though the vocals are much closer to Michale Graves than Danzig. I'm not familiar with Born Against but it sounds like a pretty faithful HC cover, just with a noticeably fatter guitar tone than on the rest of the CD (the cover tracks were recorded in a different session from the album).
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