“What a gloomy place Finland must be to produce so much doom metal. While you’ve likely encountered the doom giants Lord Vicar, Spiritus Mortis, or Reverend Bizarre in your travels, it is within the murky depths of the Finnish doom underground that you might stumble upon Helsinki-based Cardinals Folly. The band’s press loves to point out their status as an underground band, which feels strange.” Doom for improvement.
“Sorcerer are back, and boy howdy did I need the sanctuary afforded by their classic epic doom sound after marinating for weeks in Autopsy’s gore-encrusted catalog! For those not familiar, Sorcerer haunted the Swedish doom scene since the late 80s without seeing a proper release until 2015s In the Shadow of the Inverted Cross. Though I was a fan of their demos and compilations in the 90s, I missed In the Shadow entirely and didn’t come back on board until 2017s The Crowning of the Fire King. That album’s loving tribute to the Candlemass school of epic doom blew my mind and ended up my Album o’ the Year. I still spin it often and it’s one of my favorite albums of the decade.” Wanded: Dead or Alive.
“Good drone swallows you. Drone is not meant to invoke movement or adrenaline, but to evoke a mood or place. It sweeps away like the tides, not with rhythmic intensity but with mammoth weight, and dwells with you. A dybbuk is a Jewish mythological creature that sits on your chest while you sleep, and at its best this album attaches to you like a parasite. Wailing and gnashing of teeth echo across the fray, visceral and ritualistic, and as haunting as it is devastating. The place Catafalque takes you to is not the foot of great mountains or grey cityscapes, but a shadowy place that is as possessed as it is otherworldly.” Honing the droning.
“Back in the days before the Great Plague (2018 to be exact), I stumbled upon a quirky underground act called Vanishing Kids and their Heavy Dreamer album. Hailing from Wisconsin, they billed themselves as “somnambulic doom,” which intrigued me but didn’t really do justice to their unique sound and style. They play a slick mash-up 70s acid/psychedelic rock with 80s goth rock, ethereal wave, and yes, some random bits of doom sprinkled in. The end product is haunting, dreamy, and entirely gripping, full of moodscapes that envelope you like a heavy fog. I still play Heavy Dreamer regularly and there’s just something special about the album that sticks in my head and heart. As the world hid away from 2020 to 2022, Vanishing Kids used the isolation to work on the follow-up, and after 5 years we get the appropriately titled Miracle of Death.” The Kids are alright.
“Décembre Noir has been a model of classy consistency for four albums now. This German quintet’s long-form doom compositions wend their slow way toward weighty themes of loss and grief, mixing in some death metal tropes and tempos to keep things spry. They’ve been plodding off in pursuit of mournful majesty–or is it majestic mournfulness?–since 2014, and hitting their mark so reliably that there’s been little need to shake things up along the way.” December as lifestyle.
“The Netherlands has a very healthy black metal scene, with many bands using peat-bogs and Germanic folklore as inspiration. Until recently, Iskandr was part of that tradition. Twelve gave the band a mixed review last time, and clearly, this caused a major identity crisis in drummer M. Koops (Fluisteraars et al) and everything-elser O. Iskandr (Dool, Turia et al). Because Spiritus Sylvestris marks a huge shift in the band’s sound, going from shrieking and blastbeats to pastoral atmospheric doom.” Horse of a different color.
“Since 1994 this sadboi doom/death Katatonia spin-off has been spewing sullen tunes to the beat of a depressed march. Originally more in line with a stripped-down presentation of the kind of work that Dance of December Souls started and Brave Murder Day championed, October Tide festered into its own deathly beast, eventually seeing the legendary Jonas Renkse step away to a succession of progressively more vile vocalists.” High? Low? October Tide.
“The Tower feels like ascent. You’ll feel light as air, floating upon the ether in warm sunlight, only to crash to earth in plummeting gravity. While journeys are not uncommon across metal’s many weathered and storied expanses, Australia’s Bolt Gun offers a vertical trek. Its experimental fervor, blackened climaxes, and monolithic weight, and above all, the emphasis on atmosphere, offer scenic vistas and groveling earth alike, hurtling towards the summit and the zenith. Always majestic, as if in reverence to the colossal structure always in view, The Tower feels like a chronicle: a breathing, organic, but dense legend.” Climbing creativity.
“Rorcal’s approach to auditory darkness is nonetheless unmistakable, post-hardcore and post-metal coursing through every vein. Dissonant and ominous, tar-thick slogs of drone/sludge contrast mightily with raw wounds of blackened shreds with impeccable balance.” Silent but deadly.
“Phoenix, Arizona’s Thorn, in spite of having a ridiculously generic name, has its trademark sound down to a science. Featuring a blasting and impenetrable wall of death metal, as cavernous as Cruciamentum and as sticky as Chthe’ilist, the sound has transferred neatly across the act’s three full-lengths – the only issue is just how fast to play it.” Thorn in the ears.
