Review by Vinny for Mizmor & Hell - Alluvion (2025)
As with anything involving two of the biggest names in doom metal, Alluvion was destined to succeed from the off. With main Hell man, Matthew Scott Williams deciding to collaborate with Mizmor supremo (and live drummer for Hell), Liam Neighbors on a full-length album, 2025 just got a lot more interesting. Both are established artists in their own right of course and so anything they collude on is bound to be monstrous, right? Well, the simple answer is yes, yes, it is. Alluvion is an absolute triumph of a release. It achieves that rarified atmosphere of being vast and expansive without ever becoming boring or taxing to listen to. Indeed, the only struggle I have when listening to it is to not immediately play it again on loop.
The atmosphere on Alluvion is nothing short of humongous. It is repressive in that it takes all your attention to truly admire its oppressive density. The whole experience is devoid of leniency in that it simply does not let up once for nearly forty-minutes. The boldness of artists who can produce such domineering sounds and not think to give any respite at all is a joy to behold in a world of mass produced, easily accessible and safe music. This album is just the soundtrack to your worst, unending nightmares by comparison. It relies on no pillars of technicality or musical fanfare. Repetition and (largely) slow grinding riffs are the order of the day here. Inflections of atmospheric chaos litter the record (those shrieking voices at the end of ‘Vision II’) along with black metal fury (‘Pandemonium’s Throat’) flooding in to really spice things up.
These bursts of variety give an impression of a morose record, its ill-tempered nature seemingly impatient with itself even at times. Yet perversely, in the main, it continues to pick agonisingly slowly at a festering scab that barely conceals an infected, gaping wound. Building is the wrong word to describe how tracks come together; they lumber into existence. Drenched in reverb and with a somehow beastly psychedelic edge to some of the guitar riffs, Alluvion continues to develop its hideous soundscape without respite. My only criticism is the drums seem too far away in the mix, they sound like they are treading water at times, notwithstanding they have a wall of noise to compete with most of the time. When they do bob their head above the crashing waves of misery there is a deftness in their delivery that probably could have been allowed to shine a little more in the mix.
It is still a minor quibble in an otherwise sensational auditory experience. As an aside, I am unsure if the it was the intention but it looks to me as if the album cover is trying to recreate the painting ‘Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion’ by John Martin.