Nothing beats a sunny day, a cold beer, and some sludge and doom blasting over the speakers as I melt in the heat. Just in time for summer, Fórn is reissuing The Departure of Consciousness (Persistent Vision Records) for its ten-year anniversary. The Boston-based funeral doom/sludge outfit made their name in the Boston scene by bringing some of the heaviest, most beefy riffs. Now they grace us with a reissue of their debut full-length where those riffs are as tasty as ever.

“Dweller on the Threshold” officially starts off the record after the instrumental opener with a true mission statement. Guttural vocals with some shrieks, heavy tom drumming, and doomy guitar riffs create a paralyzing wall of sound.

“Gates of the Astral Plane” continues this same flavor of truly heavy music and doubles down by utilizing clean guitar work in the foreground of bridge parts in the song. These guitar licks add more of a melancholic punch to the proverbial stomach. As you think it cannot get any more depressing, the tremolo-picking guitar part in the outro also hits hard.

“Alexithymia” follows in the footsteps of the previous track with more guitar leads in the foreground and the crushing rhythm section in the background. About halfway through, the whole dynamic switches with a bluesy, sludgy riff that pushes this track out a bit more than the other tracks on the album.

The last track with vocals (before a closing instrumental), “Suffering in the Eternal Void,” starts off very soft and depressing, as if to state the end is near. A couple of minutes in, the distortion and fuzz are turned on, but the same gray cloud of noise and vibrations is still present. There is also a quick, yet appropriate, guitar lead (may even consider it a solo) that really wraps it all together.

It has been a long while since I have graced my ears with Fórn riffs and it feels good knowing these old tunes from them still hold up a decade later. The Departure of Consciousness is the best way to be introduced to these gents, regardless of when you first heard the album. While this reissue does tickle me in the right ways, the talks of all new material later this year has me itching for more.

Buy the album here:
https://forn.bandcamp.com/album/the-departure-of-consciousness

8 / 10
TIM LEDIN