Burial in the Woods - Church of Dagon (2019)^{Release ID: 10853}

I feel certain there is a hefty tome to be written concerning the relationship between the tales of HP Lovecraft and metal. Doom metal in particular is suited to HPL's tales of lurking horrors and creeping terror, as it is most successful when creating an atmosphere of unease and melancholy. 

Burial in the Woods are a solo doom metal outfit of Germany's Gerileme, a veteran of several underground doom and black metal bands such as Idisenfluch, Osteon and Ravnsvart and are one of the most recent bands to plough this particularly fruitful thematic furrow. This, the debut release under the Burial in the Woods moniker, consists of fairly orthodox, slow doom riffs in the vein of Lord Vicar, Apostle of Solitude et al with skirling guitar work layered on top and black metal-influenced low, shrieking vocals. There are several well-worn tropes of Lovecraft-related metal - chanted, ritualistic vocal sections and a liberal use of (seemingly real) church organ (particularly on the instrumental Ecclesia Dagoni) meant to exemplify the blasphemous rituals of the devotees of Dagon and others of the Cthulhian canon. This may all sound a little clichéd and underwhelming, but Gerileme has managed to weave these prosaic elements into a whole that has the, presumably intended, effect of producing an atmosphere of unseen horror and dread, blasphemous rituals carried out in delapidated New England fishing village chapels as befits the source material. 

The twenty-four minute closing track, Gölgeler Alemi, is a reworking of a song from the solitary album by one of Gerileme's old band's Negatum which, other than the length, with it's lyrics telling of an unseen Purgatory for departed souls, doesn't differ greatly from the rest of the album either thematically or musically.I