Tag Archives: funeral doom

Shape of Despair – Monotony Fields

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It’s staggering to realise that Finnish sextet Shape of Despair have been travelling their heart-rending road for twenty years. New album Monotony Fields (Season of Mist), the band’s fourth, is their first in eleven years and first without their noted growler Pasi Koskinen. The good news is that Koskinen didn’t take the magic with him.

This is poignant stuff: from the atmospheric synth work building the form of opener ‘Reaching the Innermost’, the immense dirge ‘The Blank Journey’ and devastating closer ‘Written in My Scars’; to the sparing piano intermittently puncturing subtle yet powerful riffs, dropping tears into the soul. With piercing, vertiginous lead chords, and the moving intonations of Natalie Koskinen stopping the guttural growls of Henri Koivula, there’s more than a smattering of the symphonic here.  The funeral march pace, however, lends more than enough real gravitas to ensure that the passion is not diluted.

At over 70 minutes’ duration, this is a long trek so the lighter touches serve to enhance and tickle the brain: the evocative, cosmic synth of the title track underpinning the mournful growl and ramping up the emotion rather than urinating on it. The tempo also, hardly relenting, rarely moves above a respectful coffin retinue. The nebulae of ‘Descending Inner Night’, augmented by lead pedal effects, are stellar and supremely emotive – the Anathema-like cleans here chilling the bones, the whole a premier example of an outfit atop their game and as moving as the Liverpudlians to whom they perhaps invoke most comparison. The swell of ‘In Longing’ and the slightly more up-tempo ‘The Distant Dream of Life’ is chest-filling, the contrast of the harsh vocal a delicious melding of tastes, the latter an incredibly touching track and the embodiment of this album’s seeming intent to enlighten and give hope as it simultaneously crushes all resolve.

Often nearing the borders of Cheeseville without ever setting foot inside, Monotony Fields adds a touch of light to the overwhelming darkness of Funeral Doom yet, far from trivialising it, only increases its power to move and intrigue. This is as refreshing as it is heartfelt and affecting.

 

8.0/10

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PAUL QUINN


Ophis – Abhorrence in Opulence

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If there’s one band that’s been criminally starved of attention, it’s German hostile miserabilists Ophis. I felt Effigies of Desolation, last year’s compilation reissue of the outfit’s first EP and album, would boost their profile and hopefully Abhorrence in Opulence (both Cyclone Empire), their latest supreme slab of deathly, funereal doom, will send that reputation soaring.

The early entrée of Asian chants cedes to the potentous thud of Nils Groth‘s cavernous drums and, when the tolling riffs are dropped in like manhole covers from the sky, the languorous yet ominous tone is set. Philip Kruppa‘s initial roar is a vile, scouring monster with the depth of the Marianas trench, whilst the sorrowful lead work at the two-third point of epic opener ‘Disquisition of the Burning’ hauls a warm yet desolate cocoon of misery to the close, curtailing a savage anger which never quite explodes into breakneck speed. It’s a crawling behemoth which embodies the Ophis sound perfectly.

The brooding ‘Among the Falling Stones’ tantalisingly swells and ebbs, some powerfully resonant and dictatorial stickwork joined by pulverising bass and riff sections; the whole magisterial in its funeral march section when a sparing lead builds into an affecting post-Black crescendo, eased to its demise by a heart-rending violin. The eerie ‘A Waltz Perverse’, though retaining the crushing force, possesses a slight technical air and strange rhythms reflecting the title, while the slithering hostility of ‘Somnolent Despondency’ is by turns oppressive then violent in its power.

A masterpiece of darkness and misery, the track’s middle section is brutally onerous, the drums creating a pounding intensity while desolate, delicately-picked leads and a howling solo send shivers down the spine, only increased by the single bark and seabed-deep scours undercutting them. Thunderous double kicks drive the mournful, murderous closer ‘Resurrectum’ to its wonderfully depressing end complete with resigned, despairing roars and intonations, through to an explosive and blasphemous finale.

The despair and emotion positively bleeds from every pore of this colossal album, a stunning powerhouse from a band growing in capability and maturity. You’ll bathe in the luscious suffocation of its unbearable weight and power.

 

9.0/10

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PAUL QUINN

 

 


Profetus – As All Seasons Die

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As All Seasons Die (Svart)…happy eh? This Finnish five piece, housing ex- and current members of Horna and Corpsessed, don’t come across as cheerful, and indeed theirs is the most funeral of doom.

Orchestral keys at a snail’s pace accompany the sparse yet crushing riff and drums of ‘A Reverie (Midsummer’s Dying Throes)’, the flattening qualities of the bridges when everything collides together, both awe-striking and ominous, Anssi Mäkinen‘s voice a crawling, seeping growl to terrify the hardiest soul. It is tolling and metronomic with an affecting organ solo a striking, mournful interlude which lingers and carries a titanic beat and riff, that builds the drama, the emotion and the oppression, yet never changing pace. It’s impossible to convey just how staggeringly effective this is, which is remarkable when you consider that there are periods when it seems as if nothing happens.

The reverberating chant of ‘Dead Are Our Leaves of Autumn’, delivered as if from God on high, is so gentle yet resonant as to caress the mind whilst cracking you in the face. Mäkinen’s doleful tones induce paradoxical feelings of misery and euphoria whilst initially understated lead work soon becomes the centrepiece escalating to stunningly emotive levels, imitating gulls on a barren shore à la Marillion’s Steve Rothery. It is an exercise in precision and control, yet feels as organic as the Yorkshire moors – harsh, desolate, yet staggeringly beautiful.

As the life cycle ends with the tolling, effortless yet pounding closer ‘The Dire Womb of Winter’, creeping with the speed and stealth of a hunting cat, it really does echo the seasonal despair’; portentous, weighty, and shudderingly affecting despite the occasionally soporific pace. A spearing riff shoots forth at intervals to prevent sleep, and replace the weight in slow motion. Yet when the keys begin to build to the crescendo there’s the slightest quickening, a lifting of mood. A rebirth…?

The disaffected listener who craves more action, the quick hit, is already dead inside. The clue is in the description: life affirming whilst lamenting the sadness of it, this is another winner from Svart.

8.5/10.0

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PAUL QUINN

 


Swordwielder – Grim Visions of Battle

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The first album released by this Hawaiian label (which means ‘Blood Cube’ in spanish) was the stratospheric entrée from stoner doom duo Vulgaari. Whilst their second full-length printing doesn’t quite match the resonating magnificence of that release, this debut offering from crusty swedes Swordwielder shows enough to prove that the company knows a good tune when it hears one.

 

Sounds of black and crust are to the fore in Grim Visions of Battle (Cubo de Sangre), but there’s a strong current of doom also, evinced in the funereal onsets of opener ‘World Funeral’ and the ball breaking ‘Out Of Hades’. There are some nice lead flurries with that of Shadow underpinning the track beautifully, whilst the mysterious voice (there is a distinct lack of information about band members anywhere on the web) has a throaty, obsidian roar akin to Horna’s Spellgoth without the emphysemic wheezing. Melodic riffs often enhance the evil elements, giving new life and mystery to ‘…Hades’, whose structures incorporate a punk sensibility alongside some dictatorial stickwork which never quite reaches blastbeat status, whilst galloping, screaming leads whip the track to its close. It’s this variation which lends an air of intrigue and prevents this from becoming just another black album. The bass and drum combination leading ‘Force Of Nature’ opens into one of those punk undercurrents, interspersed by a brief, dazzling lead and with that voice spitting a burning evil, whilst the band show their dark roots in ‘Fields Of Genocide’; all rapacious fury with a veering riff. There’s real emotion in the soft, aching start to the often savage yet ominous closer ‘With My Dying Breath I Curse This World’: a track as dramatic and grandiose as its title would suggest, and indicative of the desolate visions Swordwielder wish to invoke.

 

It’s been a good start to 2014 for those enjoying a crust-filled darkness, with this release showing form in the wake of a sterling offering from Brit black-punks Cultfinder. There’s more work to do if this Gothenburg quintet desires greatness, but the invention accompanying the standard black sound shows there’s plenty to look forward to.

 

7.5/10 

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PAUL QUINN


Year of No Light – Tocsin

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year of no light album coverFeaturing three guitarists and two drummers, there’s a whiff of Cult of Luna hovering around Bordeaux natives Year of No Light, and it’s not just down to their multitude of members. The band play post metal with elements of drone and the occasional heavy trek into doom/sludge realms, and also operate as a kind of collective entity, with collaborations and compositional work the order of the day. In case you hadn’t already guessed, the music on Tocsin is very heavy, very depressive and very slow. It’s also very damn good.

Opening track ‘Tocsin’ clocks in at nearly fourteen minutes and doesn’t really do much until about halfway through when a menacing post metal riff makes its presence felt through the ambient noise like a mastodon emerging from fog. This, accompanied by some squalling guitar noises and simple, yet devastating percussion sets the scene for a near hour long crawl between the two pillars of doom and dissonance, a place where there is little, if any light. By contrast, ‘Géhenne’ is a mere six minutes and employs some much quicker tempos. Imagine Baroness covering a My Bloody Valentine track via an endless field of amplifiers and the crushing wall of noise that is the Year of No Light modus operandi begins to make sense. At this point it may be advisable to check that your ears aren’t bleeding.

‘Désolation’ is a much more sombre affair, the morose keys more than embodying the track’s title as we take a turn into more depressive territory. Or should that be swan dive? Either way, the feeling of utter emptiness is an oppressive one, in no way helped by the deep bass notes and mounting wall of distortion that threatens to consume all and sundry within its devastating path. You almost wish some vocals would come along to indicate a human presence, but tough luck; there aren’t any, just the drone and the void.

The haunting synths that open ‘Stella Rectrix’ are little more than a false dawn, scattered rays on the aftermath of a battlefield, perhaps with funeral doom monarchs Skepticism as the overseers. The funereal pace of the crushing guitars, marching ever onwards is utterly devastating, while the use of repetition never becomes dull, as the music subtly evolves and changes texture. This is akin to having your soul crushed in slow motion, and the thing is, you want it to happen. That’s only how the hazy drone and blackened, pummeling riffs of closing epic ‘Alamüt’ are capable of being withstood without collapsing, weeping to the floor under the sheer weight of the whole thing.

Not for those with short attention spans or those who like music with a sunny cheerful disposition, Year of No Light create challenging, intense music, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to call it art. It’s art of an outsider nature however, and for those who have been looking for an act to bridge the gap between Cult of Luna and Sunn 0))), this is an undiscovered Rembrandt. And vocals? Who needs them anyway?

8/10

 

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