American doom dealers Professor Emeritus have been plying their trade for a decade and a half now, with new album A Land Long Gone being the second full-length fruit of the band’s career.

This new album builds on the foothold delivered by their 2017 debut Take Me To The Gallows; new vocalist Esteban Julian Pena has a more ‘ear-friendly’ style than his recording predecessor MP Papai, giving the material a broader appeal than has perhaps been present before, although the general feel – US power metal meets what is now known as ‘epic doom’ remains the same.

I was struggling to find a phrase to sum up the flow of the record, and when I mentioned this to Sentinel Daily editor Scott Adams he immediately came up with what I needed: “It’s an album of two halves” he declared, with a wizened, Saturnine gravitas that seems to grow at the same length as his snow white beard… A Land Long Gone is exactly that, with the first half comprising the album’s more immediate material, the second it’s more progressive.

The song’s opening two tracks, A Corpse’s Dream and Zosimos, are where there appeal lies largely for this writer, though that’s not to say that the later songs on the record lack excitement or drama in their own way. But, on A Corpse’s Dream especially, the band capture the spirit of ‘true heavy metal’ perfectly, with a power and vigour that sweeps up the listener and transports them to lands of mystery and suspense. Pena’s voice is the perfect tool for the job; Broadly in the same area as Messiah Marcolin but with a latent edge of something more menacing (he doesn’t sound as unhinged, but personally I get a real sense of Agent Steel‘s John Cyriis for some reason!), he brings powerful animation to the already strong guitar motifs of Lee Smith and Tyler Antram.

This style of metal appears to be in rude health at the moment, especially in the US, and Professor Emeritus are certainly among the best that America has to offer in this field of metal at the moment!

A Land Long Gone releases on June 13th