Wow, even by our very lackadaisical standards, the June Record(s) o’ the Month are painfully late! We hereby apologize for our shameful delinquency and look to be somewhat more timely in the future (if inhumanly possible). Contrition aside, there were a lot of interestingly oddball releases in June and some of them really stuck in the staff’s collective craw. This may be one of the more unusual Record(s) o’ the Month groupings yet, which means the staff’s tastes are getting weirder or more refined, it’s a pick ’em’. Great to be back!
Saturnus have always been a mercurial doom act, with ever-increasing gaps between releases. It took them 11 long years to follow up 2012s Saturn in Ascension, but when we finally got The Storm Within, it was worth the interminable wait. Fortified by members of Eye of Solitude and Autumnal, the Danish doom mongers come out of the darkness hard and mean, offering sumptuously bleak, despondent doom epics drenched in melancholy and despair. Mammoth, meandering doom set pieces like the title track and “Chasing Ghosts” sweep you away to empires of forlorn tragedy, and the heartstrings are plucked ever so delicately. Nods to My Dying Bride and Novembers Doom lurk behind every mausoleum, and the sounds of the Peaceville Gothic doom salad days fill the graveyard, sometimes descending into massively weighty funerary sojourns. As I, the Steel One, summed up in my review ov steel, “This is the kind of album one can spend an eternity in, dwelling amongst the gorgeously depressive melodies.” C’mon, feel the sadz.
Runners(s) Up:
The Anchoret // It All Began With Loneliness – Canadian progressive strangeo’s The Anchoret made quite a statement with their wide-ranging debut, It All Began With Loneliness. Fusing progressive death metal with classic prog in the vein of Pink Floyd and King Crimson, The Anchoret take you on a 58-minute voyage to strange places. Intricate, and unpredictable, the compositions may remind you of any number of better-known acts, but The Anchoret’s sound and style remain unique, which is something special in this day and age. As a very impressed Carcharodon opined, “It’s rare in metal today to find a band that genuinely sounds unique. Sure, The Anchoret has a ton of evident influences but it’s also doing something different from all of them and, for the most part, pulling it off expertly.” Dare to be different.
Serpent of Old // Ensemble Under the Dark Sun – Turkey’s Serpent of Old marry atmospheric death metal with the jarring sounds of dissodeath and black metal on their ginormous Ensemble Under the Dark Sun debut. Gripping, suffocating, and oppressive, the sounds Serpent of Old unleash are not for the faint of heart and can be both punishing and draining. The band intend to frighten and intimidate the listener and they do a good job of it with long-form compositions overflowing with hostility. They don’t lose sight of the need for atmosphere and nuance though. Thus Spoke laid it out in the simplest terms thusly: “Serpent of Old have crafted one of the best metal records of 2023 so far, no exaggeration.” Bold words.
