Doom and Gloom for the Holidays

By Calen Henry. Holiday music tends to start a bit early and maybe you've had your fill by now. If you need something a bit gloomier for the final stretch, here's a triple dose of doom to bring you down and pull you through.

By Calen Henry.

Holiday music tends to start a bit early and maybe you've had your fill by now. If you need something a bit gloomier for the final stretch, here's a triple dose of doom to bring you down and pull you through.

Artwork by Paolo Girardi.

Perennially underrated death doom stalwarts Runemagick dropped their thirteenth album in late October. Into Desolate Realms, true to its name, album number, and release just before Halloween is all about doom and desolation.

It’s laser focused right from the cover art; an erupting volcano, flanked by the moon and a red sun, surrounded by jagged mountain peaks. The lyrics detail ruined civilizations, arcane rituals, awakening horrors, and creeping dread and they're delivered in a low, but intelligible growl. The songs are predominantly made up of ominous chromatic riffs, and writhing tremolo leads, supported by drum fills to move from riff to riff, rarely settling into straightforward chugging. Most tracks are fundamentally a mid-tempo trudge but within a relatively narrow death doom framework Runemagick keep the songs going with near constant movement in the guitars or drums. It’s a fascinating approach reminiscent of the most recent Hooded Menace, but rather than coming across as Gothic decrepitude there’s a constant oppressive feeling permeating the album giving it a bit of the edge of HM-2 driven old school death metal.

Straddling so close to the line between death metal and doom metal may put off fans leaning more towards one camp over the other. Additionally the album length can be a bit intimidating, but it’s worth noting that the final three tracks (totaling about 20 minutes) are taken from the band’s EP, The Opening of Dead Gates, and are a nice bonus but the album flows better when “After the Sepulchral Lava” is the actual closer.

Artwork by John Gallo.

Ruins of Eternity is only Orodruin’s second album, and it comes 16 years after their debut putting them in an odd place; little known veterans returning to a genre that has since exploded in popularity. The closest modern touch points are Crypt Sermon and Khemmis but Orodruin sounds much more vintage than the former, and more purely traditional doom than the latter. The guitar, both the tone and the playing, set Orodruin apart the most from the pack.

The tone is much mellower than a lot of doom metal, far more vintage tube overdrive than modern distortion. Even the amount of drive is dialed back closer to 60's and 70's rock and proto-metal than full fledged doom metal. The mellow drive doesn’t hinder the riffs though; they still crush, but occasionally breaks into faster galloping metal riffs and fuzzed out leads. The bass and drums fill out the sound nicely, with thumping clean bass supporting the guitars and nice variety in the drums leading from riff to riff. The soft edge to the guitar attack works well with the purely clean vocals to deliver a compelling spin on what, at first may seem like a fairly standard doom record.

That might explain why it seems to have gotten somewhat glossed over, which is a shame, because Orodruin have made one of the better doom records this year, and one that gets even better every time I spin it.

Lord Dying, having put out two albums of Savannah Sludge metal akin to bands like Black Tusk, Baroness, and Kylesa, released something completely different for their new opus Mysterium Tremendum. Looking backwards to 70's prog rock for inspiration, and inwards through personal tragedy, the band deliver a prog infused conceptual sludge opus dealing with the terrible mystery (mysterium tremendum in Latin) that is death.

Catalysed by personal tragedy it's a conceptual record about the inevitability of death, reconciling that with the desire to live life to the fullest giving it a note of hope within the heavy themes.

To address the mastodon in the room, no, it’s not the first time a sludge metal band have reinvented themselves by looking back to classic prog rock to address tragedy, and there are certainly similarities. Lord Dying's abrupt shift to prog over one album contrasts with Mastodon's slow ascend to the prog zenith and where Crack the Skye took a maximalist approach with layer upon layer of instruments, Mysterium Tremendum is austere by prog standards.

Whether it's swirling, droning, leads, quieter acoustic passages or the stomping sludge sections that make up the albums's musical push/pull, the band mostly limits themselves to a bass groove, a guitar groove, and a lead over top. It keeps things approachable, and helps mesh the prog and sludge parts. It also means that, near the end of Mysterium Tremendum where they start to layer the sound and bring in synths, it hits harder and makes the overall album flow extremely well.

[This is the last post on Metal Bandcamp in 2019. See you again next year.]

Varaha - A Passage for Lost Years

By Master of Muppets. Doom isn't for everyone. The plodding paces and subsequently stretched out song lengths replete throughout the doomisphere don't always appeal to fans looking for a quick riff fix. Its frequent incorporation of prog and ambient stylings likewise can be seen as a turn-off for the trve/br000tal crowd, and for some strange reason

By Master of Muppets.

Artwork by Travis Smith.

Doom isn't for everyone. The plodding paces and subsequently stretched out song lengths replete throughout the doomisphere don't always appeal to fans looking for a quick riff fix. Its frequent incorporation of prog and ambient stylings likewise can be seen as a turn-off for the trve/br000tal crowd, and for some strange reason many people find that melancholic doesn't make them happy. Baffling. The rest of us, though, know doom to be a rich environment for immersive, emotional experiences beyond the possibilities offered by, say, Goatpenis; to those about to doom, I salute you, and I now present you with one of 2019's absolute best tidings of doom: Varaha's A Passage for Lost Years.

Astute readers have likely gleaned that A Passage for Lost Years is hardly a chaotic affair. There are plenty of aggressive moments and blackened bits, but by and large Lost Years' greatest strength lies in its gentle embrace of clean guitars and violin melodies. Atmosphere is everything here, and Varaha successfully instill and sustain a sombre sense of gravity via masterful utilization of the lighter side of sound. Vocalist and guitarist Fabio Brienza is right in his element amidst this balanced melancholy, shifting from delicate crooning to agonized shrieks with deft aplomb. Think modern Katatonia only lighter and heavier, and you'll be on the right track.

While the compositional ghost of Katatonia present haunts the great cold distance of Lost Years' atmospheric reach, the guitars are largely possessed by the weeping spirit of Viva Emptiness. From the scales used to the ghostly tone of the guitars, the mournful melodies found on A Passage for Lost Years are of an achingly familiar caliber that the Norrman brothers themselves would be proud of. Tracks like "Refrained" or "My World and Yours" recall Last Fair Deal Gone Down with better production and more ambitious songwriting, and if you need to read any more than that to compel you to explore Lost Years then you probably didn't need to be reading this in the first place.

For all the power Varaha wield by guiding listeners with a less-than-heavy hand, make no mistake: these Chicagoans know how to bring the noise. After all, the reason the peaceful presence of bassoon, cello and viola works so well is because it consistently yields explosive, blackened payouts. The transition from morose placidity to death-doom aggression during the first few moments of opener "Severance" makes it clear that Varaha understand balance, and things only become more mesmerizing from there. Lost Years shudders, weeps and crawls forth with organic sincerity, lashing out exactly when it needs to in a feat of expert compositional momentum.

To describe A Passage for Lost Years as the best elements of each incarnation of Katatonia would do a slight disservice to Varaha's own distinct sound, and yet it would hardly be unfair - or anything less than a heartfelt compliment. The tonal duality of Lost Years is as impressive as it is enjoyable, and the album propels itself along with a deceptive grace that completely belies its 68+ minute run time. Simply put: if doom is your thing, A Passage for Lost Years is your thing, and if Katatonia are your thing then you have no business not knowing this thing.

Blackwood - Of Flies

By Ulla Roschat. Blackwood is one of Eraldo Bernocchi's several experimental musical and artistic projects (Sigillum S, Simm, Obake...) and Of Lies is Blackwood's second release, an EP of 3 tracks with an overall playing time of about 20 minutes. That's time enough for Bernocchi to get you hooked on this relentlessly crushing Doom Dubmospheres.

By Ulla Roschat


Blackwood is one of Eraldo Bernocchi's several experimental musical and artistic projects (Sigillum S, Simm, Obake...) and Of Lies is Blackwood's second release, an EP of 3 tracks with an overall playing time of about 20 minutes. Time enough for Bernocchi to get you hooked on this relentlessly crushing Doom Dubmospheres. Even more so since he's supported by two greatly talented vocalists who lend their unique touch of eeriness to two of the three songs, Emilia Moncayo of Minipony and Stefania Alos Pedretti of OvO.

Emilia Moncayo's vocals appear on the first song "Of Flies". They are beastly gnarls and incantations complementing the minimalistic rhythms that sluggishly pound their way through the song. The vocals and the wailing guitar melody are kept quite low compared to the omnipresent sub bass lines and drone sounds, and this combination is as terrifying as it is creepy.

The structures and rhythms get increasingly disintegrated on "Seclusion". Word samples like shreds of communication, overlaying effects and especially the oscillating sounds, create a chaotic and nauseating atmosphere. The powerful beats drench everything in an oppressing slow motion nightmare.

And finally Stefania Alos Pedretti's vocals on "Infraworld" provide a very special mood. She uses her vocals as an additional sound effect. There are no words, only sounds... sounds like cries of demons and ghosts echoing from the deepest void where words seem meaningless, anyway. Waves of dark sounds swathe you into a trance like state.

The all-encompassing slow beats and sub bass lines on Of Lies capture you right from the start and take you to an obscure alien place. The minimalistic structures, deconstructed rhythms, all the sound effects and the unusual use of vocals make this place all the more uncanny and scary. It’s a place where dark meditative primeval rituals meet dystopian nightmares, where the beginning of all worlds synchronize with the end of all worlds in a buzzing vibrating tension... greatly disturbing and electrifying.