Sonny's Reviews
Old-school doom in the vein of early Candlemass and Mercy. Very well put together tunes, musically epic with huge riffs and solos inspired by classic metal. Unfortunately I'm not hugely sold on the vocals so, sorry, got to mark it down.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Ten short, sharp shocks to the spinal column and neck vertebrae, courtesy of Indiana's Wraith. Blackened thrash with a punky attitude and a huge debt to Motörhead all finished off with a cover of The Misfits' Death Comes Ripping.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
One of the few releases that attempts to breathe new life into the ever-decreasing-circle-jerk that the atmospheric black metal world has become. Epic and varied, incorporating elememts of post-rock and crust punk into the metallic mix, recommended to ears tired of the endless inferior xerox copies of Agalloch, WIITR, Drudkh et al.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2018
Whilst undeniably not one of the heaviest doom albums you'll ever hear, this does emphasise the rumbling doom aspects of the sound by allowing plenty of gentler, more melodic passages to provide a marked contrast. Another area atypical to most doom metal is the twin harmonised vocals that add another layer of melody and makes the album sound far more positive than most examples of the genre. Don't get the idea these guys are lightweight though - for sure this isn't Evoken or Burning Witch - but they are more interested in exploring the contrast between light and dark in the manner of progressive rock or metal rather than pounding out unrelenting misery and despair in another monolithic dirge.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
This is an atmospheric album of introspective doom, although the melancholy is expressed via a lighter sound than the usual crushing heaviness of most examples of the genre. It utilises heavy riffs only sparingly - the first doesn't really appear until about quarter of an hour in. I would add this to the growing list of albums that I consider as "doomgaze", that is to say, albums that, whilst still being rooted in the doom genre, have a more wistful sound than is usual... and it's a pretty good one at that!
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2017
Excellent album of true doom, in the vein of bands like Reverend Bizarre that also incorporates traces of other influences such as the sinister industrial feel to second track Eternal Casket and the psychedelic bookends to Welcome the Night that sound like parts of a long lost Floyd track from their Saucerful of Secrets era. But don't let this mislead you, the doom aspect is most definitely prevalent and is superbly done. In fact, my only gripe is that, at 33 minutes, it is way too short.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2016
The three tracks on this, Alkymist's second EP, deal with the post-apocalyptic vision of nuclear war, culminating in There'll Be No Resting which, a little like Ebeneezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, reveals that all has not yet come to pass and an angelic/demonic vision warns what may happen if the human race doesn't change it's ways. Heavy stuff, even if taken as an allegory for the impending environmental apocalypse rather than all-out war, but the music succesfully reflects the weight of the subject, a black/doom parable for the modern age. This, along with 2018's Spellcraft Ceremony are, for me, fast establishing Alkymist as one of the great underrated outfits in both black and doom metal.
Genres: Black Metal Doom Metal
Format: EP
Year: 2019
This album, in common with many funeral doom releases, is not for the faint-hearted. It's extreme length (101 minutes) and heavily introverted lyrics make it an inaccessible listen for many. But for the patient, who have maybe cut their teeth on more accessible extreme metal, this is a supremely rewarding listen and one of the premier doom albums of all time.
Whilst the lyrics are indeed introspective, focussing as they do on pain, loss and death, the music, despite being pulverizingly slow and heavy, also has a spacy expansiveness that acts as a counterpoint to the morbidity of the words and the desperation of the growling, howling vocals, evoking the majesty of the universe and outer realms, as if offering the listener an alternative to such morbid introspection.
Despite the length of the album and the reputation of funeral doom for being monolithic, this actually has quite a bit of variation, from earthy plodding to soaring majesty, and stupefying bleakness to visceral savagery. There's even some full-on uptempo death metal during the (relatively) short closer to disc one, Caucus of Mind.
The whole is an extreme metal band on top form, both songwriting and performance-wise, supremely confident in what they are doing and not willing to compromise in any way. It may be a fanciful thought, but after listening to such supremely satisfying extreme music as this, seemingly tapped in to the unspoken truths of life and the universe, it sometimes feels impossible to go back to (relatively) meaningless and unchallenging mainstream metal. This really is one of those albums that may genuinely change how you feel about the music you listen to.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2008
Celtic Frost certainly had a turbulent existence. Forming after the break-up of seminal act Hellhammer, leading lights Tom G. Warrior and Martin Ian Ain seemed to have an on/off musical relationship, splitting and reforming the band several times. Despite releasing some of the defining records of the European thrash metal scene, particularly their Morbid Tales and Emperor's Return EPs and the brilliant To Mega Therion album, they seemed to be hell-bent on self-destruction. A little over a year after the release of the more experimental but well-received, Into the Pandemonium, Martin Ian Ain and drummer Reed St. Mark had left and the new lineup made a blatant grab for mainstream attention whereby they foresook the darkness that made the band what they were and put out a hair metal album, Cold Lake. This so alienated the existing fans that it looked like it was all over for CF and the band split. They reformed and released another underwhelming album, Vanity / Nemesis, before splitting again. Reforming yet again in '01 they put out a horrendous demo called Prototype that should have finished them off.
However, they stuck it out and in 2006 released Monotheist. At last an album worthy to carry the Celtic Frost name, Monotheist takes the darkness of the early thrash releases, slowing the pace down to a largely doom metal tempo and adds a heavy gothic atmosphere to the proceedings, resulting in their best album for two decades and laying the foundation for Warrior's subsequent band Triptykon. The production is very good, allowing all the instruments room to be heard, the songs are great, the riffs are heavy as hell and Tom's vocals are ominous and threatening.
Personally, I came to Monotheist a bit late, having long before given up on the band, but I guess quality wins out in the end and thankfully, this allowed Celtic Frost to bow out with their heads held high.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2006
Slumber were a Swedish band who released this, their only full-length album, in 2004. The band split in 2011, the members forming progressive metal band Atoma immediately afterwards. Fallout features melodic death doom metal with a hefty dose of symphonic metal trappings such as keyboards and choral backing vocals. The growling main vocals seem to buried down in the mix and are somewhat smothered by the clean-sounding guitar and the keyboards. There also seems to be an inordinate amount of cymbal mixed quite high that I found quite intrusive and distracting.
Generally, I find this gothic / symphonic version of death doom metal leaves me a little underwhelmed - I prefer my death doom to be more melancholy or abyssal-sounding and less bombastic. So whilst recognising that a lot of doom metal afficianados think highly of this, I've got to confess that it's not really for me.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2004
Exhorder's first new album since '92's The Law isn't as terrible a record as you would think reading the comments on RYM - it's a reasonably serviceable album of medium-paced thrash and groove metal. Now, is that good enough for a band who recorded Slaughter in the Vatican? I would suggest not and as a basis for the backlash against it, I totally get it. There is too much of a hard rock feel to the thrashing for the majority of the album, particularly the title track and the only song that even comes close to the quality of the first two albums is the penultimate track, Ripping Flesh, which, I believe, is possibly an old song anyway.
So, to summarise, it's OK, but I've listened to it a couple of times and will probably never bother again. It can only serve to diminish a (semi-)legendary band's reputation.
Genres: Groove Metal Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I'm not a huge fan of modern death metal, being as it either concentrates on being excessively technical or full of juvenile "brutal" imagery, but if this is the kind of album that is coming out of another area of the current DM scene, then count me in 'cause this is the shit! Progressive, but not full of technical wankery, with a spacey atmosphere at times reminiscent of the Waste of Space Orchestra album Syntheosis, this veers from old-school death metal riffing to space rock atmospherics without adversely affecting the out and out heaviness - it even manages to shoehorn a short section seemingly borrowed from The Dark Side of the Moon into the ludicrously long-titled eighteen minute closing track, Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul), a song that will surely be hailed as a new benchmark for an ever-evolving branch of death metal. I'm always up for a bit of sci-fi imagery and some epic songwriting to get into and this has both in spades, coupled with a great production job and performance and we have a winner of the Best Death Metal Album of the Year award.
Genres: Death Metal Progressive Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Selvans, on this their second full-length, continue to do for black metal what fellow Italian, Paul Chain, did for doom metal - make thoroughly exhilarating music with a hefty dollop of weirdness.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2018
Gorgon originally split in 2001, but the name was revived by founding member Christophe Chatelet as a solo project in 2017. This is the first release since then, featuring Christophe on guitar, bass & vocals and a session drummer. It's pretty decent old-school thrashy black metal not a million miles away from where the band started, way back in the heady days of the early nineties.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
First off, you've really got to admire Ardraos' technical ability, as he far surpasses the competency of your average black metal solo project. His songwriting is ambitious, to say the least, involving an interesting and complex interplay between the various instruments, particularly the guitar and drums. However, this level of complexity can often be difficult to reign in and the songs start to unravel as songs per se and become more like a technical exercise, or even worse, a case of over-indulgence and chronic Yngwie-Malmsteen-Syndrome. To be fair, only occasionally on this release does this happen and the overall impression is very positive, but the warning does need heeding, as I think Sühnopfer has a great album in him if he reigns it in a little (but not too much!)
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Spaniards Totengott's debut is a three-track slab of death doom that also has a significant amount of Celtic Frost in it's DNA. I really like the old-school switching between death metal and doom but what really makes it for me is how they take that ancient egyptian / sumerian vibe that CF exhibited and incorporate it into their sound. Never more so than on the final epic, the 20 minute Doppelgänger, that takes many a twist and turn 'ere it's tale is done, coming on like an unholy alliance between CF, Autopsy and early Nile. Keep all your modern technical bollocks, for me this is Death Metal Heaven.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2017
How does a band as long-lived as Destruction manage to keep things interesting within the tight confines of a genre such as Thrash Metal without alienating their existing fanbase? Well, as you doubtless know, the majority are unable to walk this tightrope successfully and Destruction are no exception. Whilst occasionally hinting at bygone day's glories, this is far more often a fairly tame affair, verging on downright boring as the songs melt into each other without ever grabbing the attention of the listener - an unforgivable sin for a thrash album. Let's be honest, 35 years is a longtime to be doing anything and Destruction sound like a band running on rails. Guess it's back to Eternal Devastation for me.
Genres: Thrash Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Brilliant album of prog-influenced doom from Italian band Midryasi. Memorable songs infused with that singular quirkiness that italian doom is well-known for. The prog influence is never more prevalent than on second track, Diagonal, almost sounding like it was taken from Porcupine Tree's superb Fear of a Blank Planet album. The overall feeling engendered by the album is more upbeat and positive than is usual in the doom genre, it even feels, at times, positively humourous. If you fancy a bit of prog / doom genre-bending then give it a try.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2013
Midryasi's 2009 album, Corridors, is a fantastic slice of psychedelic-tinged doom, of a bombastic style at which Italian doomsters excel. The entire album is Doom Heaven, but special mention must go to closing track Another Hell Within, that is just so gloriously over-the-top, yet has a chorus The Misfits would be proud of. If you've never tried Italian doom then you could do much worse than start here.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2009
This is good stuff! Although Caronte are from Italy, they eschew the quirkiness that is usually associated with Italian Doom in favour of a more straightforward approach generally favoured by the British and Scandinavians. They also have one of my favourite doom vocalists in Dorian Bones (no idea if that's his real name!) If you love Trad Doom in the vein of Windhand and the more focussed efforts of Reverend Bizarre, then this shouldn't disappoint.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2014
Beginning gently with a lengthy intro track that lulls the listener before launching into a blistering death assault, the opening salvo is a one-two body blow followed up by the slower, doomier The Spell which rumbles ominously for it's 13 minutes. Only then do we get to the infernal heart of the album and the dark majesty of the epic Doppelgänger II: The Abyss, a journey into the underworld that takes the listener, like Dante being led by a death metal Virgil, down into a Doom Inferno. A brilliantly dark and menacing, heavily atmospheric, yet still crushing, album that feels almost like classic literature fed through a Marshall stack.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Crushingly suffocating funeral doom. The occasional lighter moments only emphasising the sheer weight of the majority of the album, like someone who is drowning breaks the surface for a brief gasp of air before being dragged down once more to their watery demise.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2017
Vofa are a mysterious collective of Icelandic musicians from a number of different musical backgrounds who have combined to produce an album comprising three 12-minute tracks of bleak and sombre funeral doom, rendered even more frigid by a black metal edge that reflects the harshness of the landscape of the protagonists' homeland. Like the slipping into oblivion of a wanderer, lost and helpless, in the glacial wilderness as he surrenders to his fate.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
I feared the worst for Alunah when frontwoman Soph Day bailed in 2017, only to be joined by guitarist Dave Day at the beginning of 2019. My misgivings were misplaced however on the strength of this, their latest album and first with the new line-up which saw Diamond Head bassist Dean Ashton on guitar join vocalist Siân Greenaway and rhythm section stalwarts Dan Burchmore and Jake Mason. If anything the new four-piece sound like a band revitalised and raring to go, their eight tracks of stonerised doom metal ringing clearer than ever before, thanks to the production of Chris Fielding. If this is any indication, then Alunah have secured a bright future, at least for the time being, anyway.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Proper Sabbath-like riffs (possibly the band's heaviest to date) are topped with Sophie Day's excellent vocals, intoning lyrics about nature and natural magick, much more interesting than the overdone "hail Satan" crap that far too many less talented female-fronted retro doom outfits keep touting. One for playing on the way to this year's Wicker Man ceremony, I should think.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2017
As Was opens with a genuine progressive classic, On Forgotten Ways, a track every bit as good as anything the current masters of progressive extreme metal, Enslaved have been putting out over the last few years. It soars and swoops, featuring both clean and harsh vocals and some epic riffing that left me breathless. Although I consider this to be the albums best track, don't let me give the impression that the rest of the album is a let down, the excellent quality of both the songwriting and the playing is maintained for the album's entire 53 minutes, making this a must-hear for any lover of cerebral extreme metal.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2017
The supremely talented Déhà does it yet again, releasing his third and best album of the year following his releases under his own name and as Imber Luminis. This is extremely heavy funeral doom that is, in the main, unremittingly bleak and oppressive, yet there is an underlying majesty to the sound that inspires awe rather than despair as if the listener is beholding the haunted ruins of an ancient, long-gone yet impressively powerful, race of beings.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
It's Finnish traditional doom metal that anyone familiar with any of Phil Swanson's bands such as Briton Rites and Hour of 13 will instantly recognise. The songs aren't as good as those bands' but there's much to enjoy here for any lover of doom metal with clean vocals. They cite the NWOBHM as a major influence, which is evidenced by their obvious Witchfinder General appreciation.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Brume are a doom metal trio from San Francisco with a sound that features thick, heavy riffs and vocals from singer/bassist Susie McMullan that have the soaring, ethereal qualities of singers like Dorthia Cottrell and Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Their releases are all inexplicably named after animals, this latest, Rabbits (following Rooster and Donkey) features five tracks, mostly spanning the 8 to 10 minute mark.
It kicks off strongly with the albums two heaviest tracks, Despondence and Scurry. Both are doom-laden monsters yet still have a kind of catchiness that makes them memorable. Blue Jay starts as a gentler affair, with piano and strings, but then loads on the heaviness to a peak before fading again to a closing calm. The album's longest track, Lament, begins as another restrained affair, with a feel of bands like the aforementioned Portishead, albeit a much heavier iteration of that sound, as it resolves towards a thunderous climax. Closing track Autocrat's Fool has an earthy, ritualistic atmosphere, supplied by a paganistic drumbeat and naturalistic vocals, punctuated by moments of riff-heavy oppressiveness.
All in all a well-paced album of female-fronted doom metal that taps into the best of the genre, with plenty of variation but without skimping on the riffs.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Dense and sweeping atmospheric black metal that feels like it should accompany aerial shots of the Amazon rainforest and the heaving seas of the mid-Atlantic. Yet it carries an air of melancholy that hints that all is not right with the natural world.
The atmosphere is built up by layers of guitar, whilst the vocals and drums are buried down in the mix, demanding the listener's full attention to appreciate. Hypnotic and meditative, this is great nature-themed BM.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2014
This debut release from Maryland trio Yatra is a dense and sludgy take on the well-established stoner doom template. The vocals are gruff in a manner reminiscent of Lee Dorrian when he does his "evil" voice, the riffs are slow, thick and fuzzy, like wading through molasses in diver's boots and the rhythm section are dependably solid. Unlikely to change the world, but a worthy release for us unrepentant doomheads.
Genres: Doom Metal Stoner Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
London's Possessor play an energetic, enervating, stonerized breed of occult / horror movie-themed thrash metal. Now, there are great metal acts that are challenging and push boundaries and there are those that just play good tunes. Possessor are one of the latter - they let the songs rip and unleash rif after riff in a way that makes you just wanna let go and have a good time. Song titles like Scorpion Swamp, Slaughter High and Terror Tripping should tell you these guys aren't po-faced misery gutses, but the kind of band you should book for a hallowe'en party. Go on, give in to Possessor...
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2016
Heaving, slowly churning doom with nicely subdued keys and, variously, growling and clean, melancholy vocals that explores the impermanence of mortality within the concept of the passing of time - a subject matter well suited to the musical miasma conjured by these forlorn Finns. Unlikely to turn many heads, but I found it effective and quietly contemplative.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Helheim have produced a cracking album of progressive metal in a similar vein to the sort of thing Enslaved have been doing since Isa in 2004.
Well produced, great mucisianship and decent songs sung with all clean vocals, yet still very much black metal influenced. If you still yearn for the days of Deathcrush and Transilvanian Hunger then this may not be for you, but if you get excited by the more sophisticated direction of some BM acts, then you should give this a try.
Genres: Black Metal Viking Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2015
Came a bit out of left field this one - I wasn't really looking out for it. But hey, it's kind of blown me away. It's funereal death doom is given a great edge with a sound that carries a Killing Joke influence and guitar work that reminds me of The Cult's Billy Duffy. Being a bit of an 80's gothic rock fan, for me this works surprisingly well, especially when coupled with the growled / clean vocal dynamic present in a lot of the tracks. If you're looking for something a bit different doom-wise then this is definitely worth a spin.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Neck-breaking, full-on thrashing, punky, metal madness that has the kind of energy the majority of thrash bands could only ever hope to possess. Pity they were never this good again, but, hell, to make one record this awesome is more than most manage.
As an aside, I don't know if Kurt Cobain ever heard this album, but Shadow of Mordor sounds exactly like Nirvana's Negative Creep... just saying!
Genres: Thrash Metal Stenchcore
Format: Album
Year: 1985
Four lengthy tracks of broodingly melancholic atmospheric black metal that feels a lot like funeral doom and, better than most, illustrates a correlation between the hypnotic qualities of atmo-black and the heaving atmosphere of funeral doom.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Déhà is an artist I have a huge amount of time and respect for in his numerous guises, particularly as his funeral doom alter-ego Slow and under his own Déhà banner. To this I can now confidently add his material released as Imber Luminis, a kind of hybrid of the aforementioned couple of projects, combining atmospheric / depressive black metal with funereal doom, particularly on Same Old Sufferings where the doom comes to the fore, albeit in a blackened state. Silence III takes atmospheric bm and puts a real anguished spin on it, in the manner of the better DSBM acts. Both tracks have an epic feel, albeit not in an overblown way and not merely due to the song lengths, but in the way it feels as though it is speaking to a fundamental and ancient yearning in the human soul that reaches back through the ages.
Genres: Black Metal Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Abigail Williams are a band I've previously had nothing to do with, probably because their name makes them sound like some hideous metalcore outfit. However, the Mariusz Lewandowski artwork of this, their latest release, put them well and truly onto my radar. Luckily this is no Killswitch Engage clone, but rather a melding of atmospheric and melodic black metal, resulting in a typically American release, having a denser, death metal-influenced black metal sound than the oftentimes thinner sound of European BM. Although I favour the more lo-fi aesthetic of black metal, I can still appreciate a well-produced, beefier version of the devil's own music, which is what we have here. There's a few nice changes of pace and tone too, which give the album plenty of variety. This certainly isn't a mindless blastathon (not that there's anything wrong with that), but rather a good example of a number of bands who may well have a wider appeal outside the hard-core BM fraternity.
Genres: Black Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019
Clean-sounding death doom that has plenty of variety within the confines of the genre. Well put together songs and proficient execution. The only real gripe I have is that the production is so clean that the album lacks that down 'n' dirty sound I love to hear in my death doom listening experience and as such feels a lighter affair than I usually prefer. Despite that these Italians have still managed to release an impressive debut and have grabbed my attention.
Genres: Doom Metal
Format: Album
Year: 2019