Livid – Beneath This Shroud, the Earth Erodes (Review)

Livid are a doom band from the US and this is their debut album.

2015’s Sint was extremely enjoyable, and showed huge promise for the band for potentially great things for the future. Well, the future is now, and Livid have delivered.

Livid’s music is textured and deep, full of both heavy riffs and doom-laden misery. There’s a definite underground ugliness to their music, as if they’re channelling raw feelings into a cathartic release of pent-up emotion.

The tracks seem to move with tar-like grace and the inevitability of a polluted glacier. This is grim, ugly, music make no mistake, although there are certainly elements of transcendence to be experienced here as well.

Some of the vocal melodies used across these songs are huge and epic, soaring up over the heavy riffs as they drag through the dirt of life’s existence.

Livid’s earthy doom metal may be heavy and unpolished, but it’s also highly emotive and engaging too. These songs hit where it hurts, and it’s clear that a large amount of emotional investment has gone into their creation.

More reflective, introspective spaces exist though; alongside the sludgy heaviosity the band can also create expansive soundscapes of haunting beauty when they want to. It should be noted, however, that this is mainly, (but not completely), restricted to the first track Descend, and that overall on the album the weighting is very much in favour of the darker, heavier side of the band’s music.

Beneath This Shroud, the Earth Erodes is a first-rate slab of gritty, sludgy doom metal. Livid have impressed.