Hesper Payne - Unclean Rituals

Art by Olli Hihnala

Doomsday continues with UK band Hesper Payne's Unclean Rituals from 2010. This is death doom metal, dirty, slow, and brutal. Epic songs, thick with atmosphere, are delivered using a vast array of doom styles with death metal creeping in and out. Dissonant keyboards and weird angular riffing create an uneasy mood fitting for the Lovecraftian lyrics. The songs are storytelling metal, like the fate of the evil mariner in The Maiden And The Mariner:

I knew that when I saw her
I would make her mine
take my fill of her pretty flesh
and gift her corpes to the inky brine
....

then I knew how it was to be the prey
her tendrils caught my limbs before I could escape
she slid her teeth into me gentle as a lover
as she dragged me to the sea I knew my life was over

Here are reviews from Doommantia and Don't Count on it Reviews, who also conducted an interesting interview with Hesper Payne founder and songwriter Brooke Johnson.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]