Doom – Page 127 – Wonderbox Metal

Dark Buddha Rising – Inversum (Review)

This is the sixth album from Finnish Doom band Dark Buddha Rising.

Dark Buddha Rising are purveyors of Psychedelic Doom/Drone. It’s a minimalistic-yet-shaded affair, with all varieties of dark catered for. It’s also bleak in a comforting, warm sort of ceremonial way.

There are only two tracks here, but these amount to 47 minutes of music. This is a slow-burning release, steeped in a lazy insistence; it will absolutely get to where it’s going, but it will not be hurried at all. Acting like the relentless tide of glacial marching, the band proceed to build and build until you almost can’t take it any longer.

There’s a definite Old-School, almost 70s vibe to parts of the music, although this is darker and heavier than anything from that era. The vocals are both hypnotic cleans and screeching wails; both add value to the musical onslaught and both provide a different emphasis for the listener as they work their way through the tracks.

Understated-yet-atmospheric keyboards add spice to the warm recording and the heavy bass sound provides enough low frequencies to crack glass.

This isn’t ultra-slow music; it’s on the slow-side of course, but it picks up the pace a bit here and there, although not enough to be described as fast.

The band this reminds me of most is Drone/Doom legends 5ive, although Inversum is more ritualistic in a way. Dark Buddha Rising are not a million miles away from this and it’s safe to say that if you’re a fan of 5ive then you’re likely to enjoy what Dark Buddha Rising do too.

Tune in and drone out.

Sardonis – III (Doom)

As the name suggests, this is the third album from Sardonis, who are an instrumental Stoner Doom band from Belgium.

Sardonis combine elements of Stoner Metal, Doom and Sludge into their songs. There’s no vocals, so the emphasis is purely on the music itself.

The album has more variation on it than you might think too. It avoids being a one-dimensional Stoner-fest by adding in elements of these other genres so that the band take you to many different places throughout the journey. The band are obviously equally comfortable playing at all kinds of speeds, and this is another reason that they keep things interesting.

The album has an incredibly warm and textured recording, benefiting their sound by focusing the listener’s attention on what matters.

Huge riffs are a big part of their repertoire, as befitting an instrumental band of this nature. This is not all they’re capable of though, as they also know how to build atmosphere and mood across these 39 minutes.

Occasionally I have mixed feelings about bands that are entirely instrumental; sometimes I think vocals would enhance the music and other times I know it would merely detract from what they have created. With Sardonis I think it’s a mixture of the two, although favouring the latter. Maybe a few added vocals on one or two tracks in a couple of places, leaving the bulk of it instrumental? Regardless, III is a massively enjoyable release and the lack of vocals doesn’t hold it back at all.

Recommended for fans of Karma to Burn, High on Fire, Judd Madden, Lord Dying, Pelican, etc.

Favourite Track: Forward to the Abyss. Because who doesn’t love a 12-minute Pelican-esque Doomathon with a hint of Earth to the guitars?

Eye of Solitude/Faal – Split

Eye of Solitude are from the UK and Faal are from the Netherlands. They have teamed up to produce this dark, malevolent split where each band contributes one track.

Eye of Solitude are a particular favourite of mine, with a slew of quality releases, (Sui Caedere, Canto III, Dear Insanity), to their name. Here they contribute a 12 minute song – Obsequies.

The track starts off with an exotic flavour; Middle Eastern-inspired music that shortly is replaced with heavy guitars in the mournful, Doom/Death style. Eye of Solitude are very good at combining the stark heaviness of Doom with the rich melodic streaks of Doom/Death.

The vocals continue to be the pitch-black growls that we know and love so much. If anything the singer’s voice seems to be getting deeper as time passes, and his performance on Obsequies is quite monolithic. Combined with the slow pace of the accompanying funeral dirge each growl becomes akin to the passing of aeons.

The middle section of the song is comprised of a piano and violin section, amiably breaking up the crushing misery of the main composition with a textured, emotive exploration of grief.

After this, the song crawls to a natural close, all emotion spent, all energy drained.

After Eye of Solitude comes the contribution from Faal. This is a track called Shattered Hope that lasts over 13 minutes. I have not heard Faal before this, but they quickly draw me in with their atmospheric Funeral Doom.

Accompanied by subtle synths, their music is bleak and suicidal, reminding of some of the older, slower material from Forgotten Tomb, only with less Black Metal and more Doom/Death; maybe kind of Forgotten Tomb mixed with Esoteric?

Dark growling vocals appear to swim in and out of the music, adding highlights to it rather than being the main focal point. Although the band have a heavy side, Shattered Hope is more about mood and substance than heaviness for the sake of it. It’s slow, miserable and easy to become absorbed in. Before you know it, the long running time is over with and you’re left with an unsubstantiated feeling of having lost something important.

A quality split of slow, mournful Doom. Press play and lose all track of time.

Display of Decay – Dust of Existence (Review)

Dust of Decay are a Canadian Death Metal band and this is their second album.

This is Brutal Death Metal that wastes no time on pointless intros or messing around; the album starts with a bang and is all about the aggression and violence.

Display of Decay’s brand of brutality involves nods towards the Old-School as well as worshipping at the more timeless brand of thick, groove-laden Death Metal skullduggery so beloved of bands like Deeds of Flesh, Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation.

The album has a good production; it’s raw and dry enough to fit nicely in with the underground, but strong and focused enough to have a powerful presence. I love the sound of the bass too; scratchy and omnipresent without being overpowering. It’s as if it’s saying “Yes, I’m here. I’ll be the end of you, too”.

There’s a good combination of blasting, mid-paced groove and slower sections that have a definite Doom vibe to them, akin to bands like Incantation, Zombiefication and Hooded Menace. The songs are well-written and there are plenty of decent riffs hanging around, like torture implements waiting to be used.

Dust of Existence is a really enjoyable Death Metal album that succeeds in avoiding being a faceless drone in a sea of similar bands and instead has a personality and character that’s very pleasing to see.

Blow the dust away and crank out Display of Decay at full volume.

Tyranny – Aeons in Tectonic Interment (Review)

Tyranny are a Finnish Funeral Doom band and this is their second album.

Now this is the stuff! Agonisingly slow Funeral Doom, crawling out of a long-forgotten crypt to infect the living with its venomous being.

It’s instantly enjoyable, how could it not be?

Dark atmospherics are provided through a combination of slow-warped guitar melodics and keyboard enhancements. They work together to bring the songs to a crippled, disturbed and miserable life. Bands like this are all about the atmosphere and mood, and Tyranny have bucketloads of the stuff.

There’s an almost tangible emotive veneer to the songs here. It’s like you can reach out and touch the misery. The music is so coated and soaked in despair and lost causes that it makes you wonder how the band members ever function in what we laughingly call real life at all.

The vocals are as deep and as dark as the music, with each growl seeming to stretch back in time over aeons. Perfectly matched to the music, the vocals are just another instrument, drawing out the depressive moods with cold, uncaring growls or eerie chants.

Aeons in Tectonic Interment is an exemplar of the style. Colossally crushing and hypnotically bleak, it does exactly what Funeral Doom should do; completely absorb the listener in the music and transport them to a dark, lonely place of torment and woe. Because, you know, that’s what we want from this kind of music. Oddly. But it’s true; this is an album it’s easy to lose yourself in, and I imagine that their live rituals are amazing.

This is one of the best Funeral Doom albums I’ve heard in quite a while. They know the sub-genre inside out and everything on this release is perfectly designed to attain the desired end results.

So close the doors, turn off the lights, put the music on and turn it up; Tyranny are your soundtrack to anguish, and we love it.

Witchsorrow – No Light, Only Fire (Review)

This is the third album from UK Doom Metal band Witchsorrow.

Witchsorrow are a Traditional Doom Metal band and No Light, Only Fire has all of the requisite ingredients that you would expect from this particular sub-genre. What sets it apart is a feeling of real darkness that infuses the songs, and the fact that the songs themselves are pretty damn good.

It’s well-recorded and packs a punch; none of this retro-worship, fake-authentic throwback sound for Witchsorrow. That’s not to say that No Light, Only Fire is over-produced or hyper-polished; it isn’t, it just has a very strong sound that allows the band to land with a thump.

The songs are, (largely), slow-to-mid-paced affairs that play the long game and really go in for some atmospheric occult misery, as well they should. The main exception to this rule is the first track There Is No Light Only Fire, which is more upbeat and traditionally Heavy Metal in its approach, before the more crushing Doom of the next song The Martyr kicks in.

The songs have character and charisma, and come across as prime Black Sabbath-esque songs, unearthed from a secret stash and recorded fresh in the present day. Witchsorrow appear to have gone to the Doom Metal source and made secret pacts with the same dark figures that gave Black Sabbath their powers.

So what if you’ve heard it all before? This is a damn good way to spend 64 minutes and Witchsorrow have made a firm fan out of me. What say you?

Dystrophy – Wretched Host (Review)

This is the second album from US Death Metallers Dystrophy.

Dystrophy play dissonant Progressive/Technical Death Metal that sits a little out of the normal comfort zone of Tech Death, (if there is such a thing), by incorporating a Doom influence into their songs rather than going full-blown-crazy-hyper-speed, as is the case a lot of the time for the style. Mix this with a bit of Brutal Death Metal and an Old-School flair and you have the ingredients for a crushing album.

And crush it does. Repeatedly, and often.

The most obvious reference point for Dystrophy would be Gorguts, but there’s more to the band than just their obvious influences. There’s a lot going on here and it’s good to see that they don’t hide the songs behind blurs of speed or impenetrable craziness. There are fast parts on the album, of course, but it doesn’t define them as a band. Instead this is done by the brooding malevolence and sense of menace that the songs have fostered so well by the interplay between rhythm and lead guitars. The latter do a lot of work to add tension and suspense to the atmosphere of twisted peril that Dystrophy create.

But there’s more than just menace and tension to these songs; there’s an impressive amount of atmosphere and feeling on them. Leads and solos add a lot of texture and emotive qualities, backed up with coordination and style by the heavier riffs.

The vocals are uncompromisingly harsh; deep growls that sound as if they would be quite at home in a dark, dank pit somewhere. As the complexity and nuance of the music rages around them, the vocals are brutally simple and straight to the point.

This is an ambitious release from a band who have managed to insert emotive shades of colour into their music, which is no mean feat for a Death Metal band. Wretched Host is an album to be savoured and enjoyed at length.

I would definitely recommend this one; any band attempting to do something a bit different should be supported, especially when they are doing it so well.

So yes, here’s another album to put on that perpetually expanding to-get list of yours.

Dementia Senex/Sedna – Deprived – Split (Review)

Dementia Senex are an Italian Death Metal band and Sedna are a Blackened Sludge band. They have teamed up to create Deprived – one track from each band, designed to complement each other, sharing a similar space but from a different perspective.

Dementia Senex are up first with their track Blue Dusk. After their interesting début EP Heartworm demonstrated their atypical take on Progressive/Doom/Sludge-infused Death Metal, I’ve been keen to see how their style has developed over the last couple of years.

The song starts gently, almost tentatively, before crushing guitars land like a ton of bricks. The band impress again with their Gorguts-inspired take on Progressive Death Metal, and seem to be slowly moving away from the core aggression of the genre and more and more into Post-Metal territories. Post-Death Metal? Pretty much. Aggression is still here though, just done in a non-standard way, with even the blast beats surrounded by off-kilter chaos.

After this it’s Sedna’s turn to shine with their track Red Shift. Prior to this split I was not familiar with Sedna, although it seems that this has been my loss as this song is the equal of the previous one.

In contrast to the Death Metal-based heaviness of Dementia Senex, Sedna are more firmly in Black Metal-influenced Post-Metal/Sludge territory. Red Shift has the trademark Post-Metal build/release mechanic down to a fine art, with the track gaining momentum slowly but surely throughout the playing time, only to periodically explode with Blackened Post-Hardcore violence. It’s a good combination of slow burning tension and vicious aggression that nicely builds atmosphere with harsh shouts and screams being unleashed over the ever building and expanding music.

This is an exemplary split between two quality bands. I highly recommend giving this one a shot.

Interview with Behold! The Monolith

The latest album from US Doom Metallers Behold! The Monolith has landed like a falling box of iron weights. Architects of the Void is a varied and exciting release that takes Doom, Sludge and pure Metal into its emotive embrace and produces an album forged from heaviness and darkness. I wanted to find out more about this album so I cornered their guitarist Matt Price…

For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!

Hello, I’m Matt and I play guitar for Behold! The Monolith.

Give us a bit of history to your band

Well, it was something I started doing by myself in 2006…just for fun, for myself. Just stockpiling and demoing riffs here and there. I met our bassist and vocalist Kevin McDade in 2007 and just did a bit of off and on jamming with him, then at the beginning of 2008 we decided to make it a band. We just started writing and recording and playing shows. We put out an EP and two full lengths ourselves. Then in June of 2013 Kevin died in a car accident. Our drummer Chase (who has been with us since 2010 or so) and I took a little time off but decided to move forward. We have since added Sasquatch bassist Jason “Cas” Cassonova and Fractalline vocalist Jordan Nalley to the ranks, and here we are about to put out a new album “Architects of the Void”.

Where did the band name come from?

It was just a name I came up with when I first started compiling riffs by myself, just so it had an identity, you know? I originally just wanted to call it ‘Monolith’, but there were already 4 or 5 bands using that name. I’ve always loved the word ‘Behold’. I’ve always listened to Judas Priest’s “Sad Wings of Destiny” starting with what is technically side 2 with the song “Prelude”…I think that was how the band intended. Anyway, the first word in “Tyrant” is “Behold! (tis I the commander)”. It’s just such an epic word. I had forgotten about it and was trying to think of names and someone said it on TV and I was like “that’s it!” and put ’em together. So when we started the band we wound up just going with that.

What are your influences?

As far as the band is concerned, too many to mention. We all come from different backgrounds and tastes with heavy music. Cas is the Stoner Rock guy and a lot of Jordan’s background is with Prog and Death Metal. Chase and I are into a lot of classic Metal and old Progressive Rock, plus I’m into dark, weird stuff and riffy Doom and Sludge type shit. I think we pretty much all come together on Black Sabbath, but we are pretty all over the place.

What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?

Since we got done recording I’ve just been mostly listening to a lot of old, mostly Proggy stuff like Yes and early King Crimson. As far as new, new stuff, I’m digging the new Arcturus album, and the new Cattle Decapitation is pretty sick. Not my normal “go-to” stuff but my brain needs a break from the slow and low stuff lol.

There’s a variety of different styles on this album, incorporating Doom and Sludge as well as bits of Classic and Post-Metal. How did this arise from your songwriting?

It’s just a catch all of the stuff me and the other guys like. I’m not a huge fan of the whole sub-genres of sub-genres thing. I get that it serves a purpose to some for categorizing or keeping things pure or whatever. But I think a Death/Doom thing or something inspired by Zeni Geva can co-exist with a part inspired by Angel Witch or Iron Maiden if it’s approached the right way. It keeps things interesting, to me anyway. It’s not like we are truly “genre-splicing”…to us it’s all just Metal or Heavy music at the end of the day.

Behind the obvious fact that it’s being released for wider consumption, this strikes me as quite a personal release. In my review I say “This sounds more like music played for the sake of musical catharsis and outlet than for the need to simply rock out or any such thing” – is there any truth to this?

Yes! Particularly for this album. I know we put a lot into this one. Losing Kevin was really hard on me and Chase, and we really wanted to do right with what we started with him. I think we were all going through our own personal stuff on one level or another, so there was some genuine release there, especially in hindsight. This one just hit a deeper chord in all of us I think.

What’s your favourite song on the album and why?

That’s a tough one actually! I could tell you what my least favorite one is, but I won’t do that haha. Right this second I’d say the album intro “Umbral Vale” into “Philosopher’s Blade” could be my favourites because they were actually the very last things we wrote right before we recorded, and they were completely written fresh and with the new lineup in mind. But I really love “The Mithriditist” and I really like the way the song “Architects of the Void” closes out the album.

Tell us about the album artwork

The art was once again by Dusty Peterson. He’s just great. He’s always gotten what we’re going for and this time he just knocked it out of the park! I had a basic idea or two in my head, and he just nailed it.

How did the recording of the album go?

It was at times awesome and at others really stressful. We had a few technical issues, mostly with equipment and whatnot. But I think some of the frustration may have actually benefited the performances.

How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?

It’s hard to say. We can plan for one thing but it can very easily wind up sounding like another. I have been going down the Prog wormhole lately – and I feel like we abandoned a lot of our vibey space-rock I originally wanted to do, so maybe more of that. But who knows? There’s a lot of potential and the slate is clean right now.

What’s next for Behold! The Monolith?

Getting this record out! And some touring for sure. We really want to make it to Europe, that is at the top of our list for sure. And there has been talk of getting right back into writing…but I’d say promoting “Architects of the Void” as much as possible is the priority right now!

 You can order it here https://beholdthemonolith.bandcamp.com/album/architects-of-the-void

Doomed – Wrath Monolith (Review)

Doomed is a solo project from Germany and this is his fourth album playing Doom/Death Metal.

Doomed’s third album Our Ruin Silhouettes was a good example of quality Doom/Death that ticked all of the right boxes for the genre. Curiously, this new release has a song on it called Our Ruin Silhouettes yet the actual album named this did not.

So how has Doomed progressed on this new release? Well, it’s still the familiar Doom/Death style that lovers of the sub-genre will be so familiar with, (how could it not be?), although on this latest album this seems a bit more riff-hungry in places, with a little more of the Death Metal side of the Doom/Death equation coming to the fore.

The Funeral Doom marches and depressive moods are still present and correct. Doom/Death is a very specific sub-genre, and once you move too far away from the core of this style you’re not playing it any more. The guy behind Doomed knows exactly what he’s doing though and these compositions milk the most from the emotional misery while at the same time allowing for sufficient variation in writing and pacing so that these 51 minutes don’t feel as agonisingly slow as the music can be.

Guest vocalists add further interest to the songs, and these compliment the main Deathgrowls which are as deep and as enjoyable as they previously were.

Due to the ramping up of the Death Metal influence, the guitars have a bit more energy to them in places and as it’s all wrapped up in a crushing production. The riffs seem to jump out of the speakers like eager puppies. Although admittedly, these are dark, misery-drenched puppies determined to drown you in woe.

Hmmm. Misery puppies?

What the Hell, let’s go with it.

Strong leads, melodies and solos abound. As one of the cornerstones of the style, the forlorn melodies are carried out really well. The songs do a laudable job of manifesting the negativity that sits at the core of the music.

The album showcases the Atmospheric side of the band in addition to the depressive. Synths and keyboards add extra layers to parts of the songs and there’s even a hint of a Progressive Metal slant on some parts of this release. If this is further developed even more on future releases then this would be a valuable addition to the Doomed sound, as it already seems to be becoming.

Wrath Monolith is a very impressive album that’s pretty much at the top of its game. I find Doom/Death to be a sub-genre that can easily become a little stale, so I’m pleased to report that this is not the case here. The music holds the attention easily and this is an album that has a lot to offer. As stated, there’s a surprising amount of variety and interest to be had here and it seems that Doomed’s songwriting is just getting better and better.

Very highly recommended.