I have been making more of a conscious effort to follow up on some of the tracks from the site playlists that jump out at me each month and that is how I ended up in front of the latest release from Georgian (as in the country not the period of English history) funeral doomsters, Ennui. The word Qroba is a Georgian word meaning “vanishment” or a “fading of presence”, representing the moment light withdraws to leave space for something colder and final. Symbolic of the temporary dissolution of the band themselves, the album explores the inevitability of the end. In short, classic funeral doom fare. With song titles such as ‘Mokvda Mze.’ (which translates to ‘The Sun Has Died’) and ‘Becoming A Void’, Ennui leaves the listener in no doubt that if they are seeking positivity, they are in the wrong place.

The band name itself is the French word for “boredom”, which I find to be particularly ironic given there is no element of that emotional state present throughout my experience of Qroba. I am starting to realise that funeral doom may well be my second favourite sub-genre of The Fallen, pushing sludge for that top spot as time goes on. In fact, I heard this record on the same day as the new EP from Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, and I prefer Qroba in a comparison of the two releases. Everything I want to hear on a funeral doom album is present on this album. Well, apart from the panduri, a traditional three-stringed Georgian instrument that I have never heard of until today. Otherwise, there are dense keys and suitably desolate atmospheres being created around them, alongside punishing riffs and the deep rumble of bass and guttural vocals too boot. All the while the drums functionally add percussive markers in the background. You could forget they are there at all on some occasions, which is more testimony to the quality of everything that’s going on around them as opposed to any fault with the performance or mix even.

I do get the occasional flourish of hope in the music, which is not something I want to hear too often in my funeral doom. Here, I think it stays just the right side of providing balance, just like the prog-reminiscent guitars around the halfway point of ‘Becoming Void’ also add a touch of the unexpected. The melancholic lead work here, which is delivered via long, drawn-out notes, almost tells its own story outside of the vocals themselves. When you factor in those keys, you soon find yourself in some cosmic death trance. If I close my eyes to this track, I just see endless space, with the odd burst of light, or the odd colour of gases that I am floating through. Listening to Qroba soon becomes a very immersive experience for me.

With over an hour of music to listen to here, I do think that Qroba is a record that has a certain place and time to be properly experienced. This is not background music. For me, if you are not sat still with this record playing, you are doing it, and yourself an injustice. It is a record that demands to be experienced as opposed to simply being listened to. From an arrangement perspective, it sounds to me like this has been very carefully put together. Tracks develop as opposed to just progressing. Given the theme of the album, it is quite easy to see this album as a soundtrack to the slow destruction of life as we know it. When that day comes, I will have this on my headphones.

Slow is a funeral doom project of prodigious belgian Déhà, who is perhaps better known for his black metal and blackgaze work, but who is also a proficient doomster with acts like Yhdarl and Wolvennest. He has released seven albums under the Slow banner, with "V-Oceans" unsurprisingly being number five and, probably, my favourite. This is the last of the Slow albums that were produced as a solo project, Déhà since having been joined by lyricist Lore Boeykens who also contributes bass and backing vocals.

Anyone even remotely familiar with Déhà's other projects will be unsurprised to hear a significant post-metal and -gazey element to Slow's funereal dirges, but make no mistake this is still ponderously heavy stuff. The vocals are of the gravel-throated, abyssal demon bellowing kind that are the cornerstone of so many fantastic funeral doom albums and are more than ably delivered here by the main man himself. As he intones at the beginning of "Ténèbres", "This is not meant to bring you joy, this is not meant to give you any solace," and it surely doesn't if you take its message literally yet, ironically, if you are a lover of the melancholy and desperate atmospherics of funeral doom then it may well bring you great joy indeed (it certainly does for me).

With tempos that are measured by a calendar rather than a metronome, the five, 10-minute plus tracks here crawl under your skin and sit there draining your optimism like a vampiric parasite feasting on the mind's positive energy, leaving its host bereft and borne down by the weight of existence. The riffs are monumental chords that swell like tsunamis, given additional heft and gravitas by layered synths and choral effects which thankfully don't swamp the guitar and drums, but which add their weight to the crushing mass subtlely enough so as not to be distracting. "Oceans" covers a theme that has served funeral doom very well over the years with its huge swells of sound being an exceedingly effective artistic interpreter of oceanic environs and deep sea tectonics, here being used as a metaphor for the unalterable inevitability of death, in other words, all the best sentiments of funeral doom.

The number of ratings for Slow albums on RYM is paltry with this being the most-rated with a touch over 300, yet this is funeral doom of the highest order that deserves to be considered up there with giants of the genre like Bell Witch and Esoteric. OK, maybe not Esoteric, but everybody else anyway! Criminally overlooked, for me this is a top drawer entry into the funeral doom pantheon.

I have been a fan of London's Morag Tong for a good decade now, since the release of this debut. four-track EP back in 2016. They are named for the fictional guild of assassins featured in The Elder Scrolls game Morrowind and their reverb-drenched doom metal is as influenced as much by stoner metal as you would expect from a band of RPG-ing nerds. My original one-line review for this went "stoner doom that's nice 'n' slow and as heavy as an anchor strapped to an anvil that's tied to a millstone" and you know what, that remains true, but there is actually a bit more to it than just sheer weight so I thought I had better elaborate.

The riffs have an in-built bluesiness that reaches back as far as Sabbath's debut but which are delivered with such heft and distortion that they sound mountainously and crushingly heavy. The soloing, such as it is, has a psychedelic, spacey tinge that is fed from the band's stoner roots and which is aided by some Hawkwind-ish electronics buried quite deeply in the mix. I hesitate to call it trippy, though, because the tempo is so lethargic and the riffs just so fucking heavy that I am unsure if anything with this amount of heft can ever be labelled as such, although the title track "Through Clouded Time" does feature some quieter, more trippy moments, such as the introductory couple of minutes or so which almost sounds like a very heavy version of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" and a quite funky bass breakdown just after the halfway point. The two tracks either side, "Godhead" and "The Eyes of Men" are a bit more straight forward but deliver such devastatingly heavy doom riffs that they are still worthy of attention in their own rights.

Drummer Adam Asquith also handles vocals which are perfectly functional for this style of stonerised doom, whereas his drumming is really good within the confines of the genre and he and bassist Sam Lewis both featuring prominently enough in the mix to lay down a super-solid foundation upon which dual guitarists Alex Clarke and Lewis Crane can lay down the towering monoliths of the riffs. The four are obviously deeply steeped in the world of stoner doom and they sound like solid technical musicians perfectly able to translate their intentions into music, so there is a definite authenticity about what they delivered here.

In summary, this is a very impressive twenty-three minutes that handed out an attention-grabbing calling card to the UK's doom metal afficianados. Unfortunately I felt 2018's full-length "Last Knell of Om" failed to live up to this promise and I have yet to hear 2023's Grieve, so this stands as the band's high water mark for me so far. Truth is though, even if they never bettered this, it would still stand as a worthy testament. I was then and remain still, mightily impressed.

If eating air was a metalcore album, it would probably sound like The New Flesh by Sylosis. It's not even that bad of an album from a technical perspective, but good lord is it boring! The vocals sound painfully generic and lacking in emotional dynamic, the guitar work can be interesting from time-to-time, but it most noticeable when it's playing one of those Machine Head type thrash grooves. The percussion is mostly tasteful, but can be a little bit overbearing at times during the metalcore style breakdowns. I don't even like Sylosis and I can tell that the songwriting has taken a massive step down over the years. Albums like Monolith with their dynamic swells and deep engrained melodies are a thing of the past as the Architects style melodic metalcore of the 2020s has taken full effect.

Meet the new flesh, same as the old flesh.

Best Songs: Beneath the Surface, Lacerations

For Fans Of: Bleed From Within, Machine Head, Architects 

I have followed spanish doom crew Hela since their earliest days and have found them to be consistent deliverers of understated female-fronted doom metal. They are one of those bands that don't push the boat out too far from familiar shores and are quite unlikely to be anyone's favourites doom metal band, but keep plugging away, refining their sound and carving out a niche for themselves.

"A Reign to Conquer" features half a dozen 7-8 minute tracks that follow a similar pattern. Taking their cues from post-metal, they generally begin softly and serenely and build in intensity as the track progresses. The intensity level never really rises above a mildly elevated pulse rate, though, and the band don't really seem to be ploughing the old atmospheric sludge furrow of catharsis through ferocity, but are content to merely shake their proverbial fists at the sky rather than tear it down. They remain melodic throughout with some doleful riffs and new vocalist, Raquel Navarro, has a plaintive, yearning style of vocal delivery that underpins the melancholy atmosphere so vital to decent doom metal.

What Hela do they do pretty well and both the songwriting and performances are proficient and point to a very professional outfit who know what they want to deliver and exactly how go about it. This all sounds like criticism through faint praise I know and I like the band, but the simple truth is that they are a decent doom metal outfit who produce albums that are enjoyable enough, but which will seldom stick with you for too long after they end.

There is a serious side note which needs addressing regarding the production which may negatively impact most people's enjoyment - it certainly did mine. This is the fact that the album features terrible sound compression which makes it feel like it is being rammed into your ears, rather than allowing the nuances of the music as written to be experienced. This is especially sad because this feels like an album that is written with subtlety and contrast in mind. For example, listen to the album's best track "Emerald Mirror", which is amped up to levels that cause actual sound distortion when it is evidently written as a far more subtle exploration of light and shade which I feel is seriously undermined by the production. Even Raquel's vocals are distorted by the mix and a more sympathetic production job would have seen my score elevated a good half-star or more I believe.