Convocation – No Dawn for the Caliginous Night (Review)

Convocation are a funeral doom band from Finland, and this is their third album.

Having been impressed with Convocation’s colossal doom offerings on 2018’s Scars Across and 2020’s Ashes Coalesce, the arrival of No Dawn for the Caliginous Night is a welcome one.

Across 48 minutes Convocation shine with a massive lightless intensity that comes from an expert understanding of crushing funeral death/doom. This is a band that were already fine purveyors of their art, yet on No Dawn for the Caliginous Night they have refined their work to even higher levels of exceptional delivery. Let’s just blatantly say it – this is the strongest Convocation album yet, which in itself is no mean feat.

This album contains five darkly beautiful hymns to melancholic heaviness and emotive doom devastation. The band’s mix of the funeral doom, death/doom, and old-school death metal genres is highly compelling, and on No Dawn for the Caliginous Night has reached its peak.

These immense songs are well-crafted and considered. They present as being painstakingly constructed by artisans who clearly love their work. They’re grandiose structures of harrowing nightmare and raging catharsis. Oceans of sombre mood, delivered with majestic grace and superlative ability, crash against the island of your being, threatening to overcome you. It’s all worth it. No Dawn for the Caliginous Night is almost overwhelming in its forceful embrace, yet it’s never too much or unendurable; quite the opposite in fact.

Alongside the core doom elements of the music, which include the formidable vocals, (which are simply fantastic), lurk a range of creative enhancements. Synths, guest vocalists, (Shape of Despair, Corpsessed, Misery Index), organs, choral elements, viola, and top tier songwriting and performances all conspire to create a richly atmospheric and immersive listening experience.

No Dawn for the Caliginous Night is a triumphant expression of supreme doom art. Through majestic darkness and weighty emotive splendour, Convocation have realised their best work so far in their relatively brief existence.

If you are someone who finds solace in the deepest realms of doom, then Convocation’s latest is one is compulsory.