January 2026 - Feature Release - The Fallen Edition

It is my turn in the rotation to welcome you to the downtuned new year of musical melancholy and I have gone with the exceptionally despondent 1997 album "Lead and Aether" from Finland's funeral doom maestros, Skepticism. It would be great if you would give us your view of it, either in a comment below or as a full-blown review.

https://metal.academy/releases/1927

I don't mind Skepticism but have always felt that they're overrated, much to Ben's bemusement. I'm well across "Lead & Aether" but have never rated it so I'll make the effort to get to it some time soon.

I don't think the band as such are overrated, but I don't think I would place their debut "Stormcrowfleet" on as high a pedestal as most other Skepticism fans, with this rather being my go-to album as far as they are concerned. Anyway, here is my long-standing review which I still stand by:

Skepticism were formed in 1991, releasing a death metal 7" in 1992, before a change in sound resulted in them, along with fellow Finns Thergothon, being credited with the development of funeral doom metal. In 1995 they released their debut, the seminal and oft-praised Stormcrowfleet album.

This, their follow-up to that genre-defining release, consists of half a dozen tracks of exceedingly slow and oppressive-feeling doom metal. The tracks range in length from six to ten minutes, but the all-enveloping, smothering nature of the music makes them seem longer (in a good way). The sound is seriously downtuned, with slow, deep, drum beats, as if some unnamed titan's heart can be heard beating in the bowels of the earth. The vocals are barely distinguishable as such, sounding like the grating of a huge block of stone as it seals the entrance to a subterranean tomb, blocking out all light with it's bulk. The keyboards and guitar are more subdued than is usual but I don't feel that this album is particularly melancholy or depressing, rather it projects more of an ancient martial atmosphere that may feasibly have accomanied the passing of a company of war elephants as they leave on a march to conquest.

There are quite a number of similarities between this and the aforementioned Thergothon's Stream From the Heavens and both albums can justifiably be held up as the standard against which all other funeral doom releases are judged, epitomising all that this style of extreme doom is about. They both are able to project epicness and true heft with, what is essentially, a stripped-down style of metal.

As an interesting aside, the band released an EP, Ethere, around the same time that has alternate versions of a couple of the tracks from Lead and Aether, The March and the Stream and Aether which seem starker and less oppressive than their album counterparts. Both versions are great in different ways and make the EP a very worthy companion piece to the full-length.

5/5

Like its predecessor, Lead and Aether has proven a great accompaniment on winter walks this weekend as the northwest of England sees its first snow of the season. That is not to say that this is a cold sounding record by any means, in fact I find the exact opposite experience to the record. To me this is the sickening warmth of a hug from the arms of death itself. It is comforting to witness, how I imagine the release of all worry, stress and adversity of life would feel at the very moment of conscious expiry of one’s existence. Far from finding the funereal keys and monolithic melodies oppressive, I take a great solace from this album, therefore.

This record plays as an instrumental in my head, the vocals are so low in the mix, consciously so I would guess, that I am almost ignorant them for much of the album. Normally I would find this as a negative point, a key missing feature almost, but here I think it works perfectly. Good funeral doom to me is about letting the music build the aesthetic and atmospheres, the vocals are just a complementary element in comparison. Equally, I think Skepticism got the placement of the drums correct here. Whilst not as absent from my mind as the vocals are, the drums provide the very definition of a subtle supporting role here. How many bands can say that they have successfully used drums o create space and atmosphere on a record?

There is always a danger that with such a minimalist approach to music, particularly extreme genres like this, that the recording can end up sounding amateur. I would argue that the opposite is in fact true here. This sounds like a thoroughly professional album, composed with care and thought for overall arrangement. Maintaining that gloomy warmth for me over the entire album duration is a real win here, but there are a couple of moments where tracks seem to end up a little disjointed (album closer, ‘Aether’ stands out for this) which just takes the perfect score aware from an otherwise brilliant release.

4.5/5