Convocation - No Dawn for the Caliginous Night (2023)^{Release ID: 49116}

Finland’s Convocation are not exactly new to me, nor are they an artist that I have invested a lot of time with either. I recall trying them once and quickly finding myself distracted and off elsewhere on my to do list soon enough. Not that they necessarily did anything wrong, I usually find that aside from mood as an obvious influence over my enjoyment of a record, some music simply must be listened to from a critical perspective. No Dawn for Caliginous Night Is not background music and nor does it impose itself on the listener intentionally. Simply put, it is so well written, performed and arranged that to attempt to listen to it casually is very near to being an insult to Convocation.

I am a fan of both funeral and death/doom and to date, I do not recall that I have encountered an album that successfully combines the two sub-genres so eloquently. It is rare for the chug of the guitar that we get treated to around the six-minute and forty-second mark of album opener, ‘Graveless yet Dead’ to be present amongst such desolate sadness. Likewise, the poignancy of the melancholy of instrumental track ‘Between Aether and Land’ is uncharted territory across such a blended style of extreme metal.

 If I recall correctly, one of the guys involved in Convocation was (maybe still is) in Desolate Shrine, and I get snippets of their sound throughout this record. The definitively gloomy sound of Finnish funeral and death/doom permeates the record as you would expect. Finland has a proud heritage already in this field and No Dawn for Caliginous Night carries on that fine lineage. With such a well-produced album it is great to hear the rumble of the low end with just as much clarity as the slow-picked guitar notes, with even the harsh vocals receiving a great airing. Listen closely to ‘Lepers and Derelicts’ and appreciate the busy nature of the track as the guitars appear to chime a tune within the track. I have already lost track of how many times I have listened to this album now. Each time I do, I discover or notice something new. As if I needed any excuse to keep coming back, constant discovery is an added boon.

Finnish duo Convocation inhabit that sector of the metal Venn diagram where the arcs of funeral and death doom overlap, which also happens to be one of my favourite shades of metal. For latest album, No Dawn for the Caliginous Night, they lean more towards the funeral doom side of things, ultimately taking a leaf out of the mighty Esoteric's book. One danger of funeral doom that these Finns avoid is in overcooking things and allowing tracks to drag along without much variation, producing arse-numbingly long albums in the process. Convocation rarely go beyond the 12 minute mark for individual tracks and their longest album is fifty minutes, this one clocking in at forty-eight. They also like to bring in some textural and tonal variation, whilst still maintaining the slow, funereal pacing from whence the genre derives it's name.

The production is excellent, allowing the heaving chords to provide a huge wall-of-sound which towers over and threatens to smother the listener with sheer sonic immensity and even though there is an undoubted crushing power to the tracks, there is much more to them than just that, with string accompaniment and vocal and guitar melodies providing a striking countepoint to the fundamrntal heaviness of the instrumentation. Opener, Graveless yet Dead, features Shape of Despair's Natalie Koskinen as second vocalist, whose soaring, angelic vocals provide perfect contrast to Marko Neuman's bellowing roars as he rails against his fate as a cursed, undying soul, fated to forever wander the Earth. The album features another couple of guest vocalists, Corpsessed's Niko Matilainen on second track, Atychiphobia, and Dying Fetus / Misery Index singer Jason Netherton guesting on closer, Procession (which also sees Ferum's Samantha Alessi providing a spoken narration).

The eye of the album's storm is the instrumental track Between Aether and Land which sits at the heart of the album and which has a less dense feel to it, being woven through with a nice melodic thread that makes it sound less despairing and hopeless than the opening twenty minutes, allowing a shaft of light or a glimpse of open countryside to infiltrate the ominous and despairing atmosphere of the remainder of the album. Naturally this is short-lived and Lepers and Derelicts hits with the full crushing force of a tsunami of hopelessness, sucking all air and positivity out of proceedings and feeling all the more forceful for it's contrast with the preceeding track, Marko Neuman's howling roars sounding increasingly desolate as he bellows the protagonists hatred of his own existence as a torturous demon, bedevilling mankind. On closer, Procession, Convocation really reveal their hand with a track that has a massive epic quality to it, with superb compositional and atmospheric flourishes, from guest Antti Poutanen's cello accompaniment to Samantha Alessi's narration and the melodic guitar work that threads it's way through those hefty, intimidatingly massive chords. Ultimately the track (and by extension, the album) sheds it's horrors and ends with a much more serene feeling as cello and picked guitar along with the closing narration seem to offer the consolation that eventually all horrors must pass.

With No Dawn.. Convocation have truly cemented their place as one of my absolute favourite funeral / death doom bands and I would claim this as a classic of the genre, making them fit to take up their place alongside genre greats like Esoteric and Evoken.