This is the second album from US doom/sludge band Low Flying Hawks.

This is doom/sludge with drone and shoegaze elements, featuring members of Melvins and Mr. Bungle.

Focused on entrancing riffs and sinister, hallucinatory soundscapes, the tracks on this album are psychedelic workouts that sound somewhat psychotic and otherworldly in their delivery.

The band’s dreamy songs seem just one breath away form transforming into nightmares, such is the impression that they give off. With slow, mournful performances and songwriting that seems to capture the essence of many things negative, the music is heartbreakingly beautiful in some ways, while in others it’s quite subtly malevolent and insidious.

The album excels at lacing elements of doom, sludge, shoegaze, and stoner together into effective and engaging renditions of emotive doom metal. Indeed; the songs are highly emotive and affecting when they want to be, frequently revealing themselves as sublime creations that largely emphasise feeling and presence over outright heaviness and crude simplicity.

Think of a mix between the mournful, stirring delivery of bands like 40 Watt Sun or Pallbearer, mixed with the ethereal drone of a band like Jesu, and you’ll have a starting point for where Low Flying Hawks work their magic.

For a moody, atmospheric trip into gradually descending, slow-burning darkness, you’d be hard pushed to find something better this year than Genkaku.