Anthrodynia - Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within
Anthrodynia is a death/doom band from Canada, who formed in 2024; “Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within” is their full-length debut.
It’s always impressive to me when a band forms and releases a banger of a full-length album not soon after. Anthrodynia is one such band–they formed and a year later drop this massive slab of death/doom. There were no prior EPs, singles, live albums, splits, or anything. They just said, “Here take this,” and dropped it.
And it is a lot to handle. Across five songs and a runtime of just over 38 minutes, “Unspeakable Horrors,” offers tumultuous extreme doom metal that has the pressure of the world’s oceans and the biting force of a megalodon. This is such a well-rounded album too, even for non-doomsters. But its “short” runtime means that even those without a long attention span can find much enjoyment here. Unlike many death/doom bands, they don’t lean too much into any one style. There are plenty of brutal, fast paced passages as much as there are slow, crushing ones.
Doom can have a depressing atmosphere but Anthrodynia don’t necessarily go that route. I mean, sure, this isn’t happy music by any means, but it takes a more brutal, crushing, and just straight up darkly evil route than any kind of depressive undertones. Again, this band truly combines death with doom metal, and it makes the album all the better for it.
“Severed From Mundanity,” opens the album with a growl that’s like something you might hear if a flesh-eating demon was chasing your ass down a tunnel with no light. The mid-tempo pacing settles in nicely, rumbling riffs and crashing cymbals pushing the song ever forward. This horror-drenched road twists and turns as the speed reaches the limits of human madness. As quickly as the horror reaches for its kill, the savoring of the flesh begins with a mid-section that is slow but still optimum full for this horrific fire.
While the aforementioned song went for the kill right away, “Engulfed In Grief,” lets the darkness sallow up the soul slowly, a methodical approach to the retreating of the light. The riffs are some of the best on the album and the song exemplifies how effective death/doom can truly be. Just after the 5 second mark, the tempo kicks it up about twenty notches, but the speed does nothing to lessen the potency of this ultra thick bass, which hits like a battering ram alongside the drums. The lead guitar in the final run of the last couple minutes heightens the atmosphere greatly and pairs well with the buzzing bass, all of it swirling together as a sound of madness.
“Cathartic Dissemination,” has a very effective long, clean intro. This passage helps set the tone of the song early on, but it also makes the distortion all that more effective when it finally arrives. Clean vocals appear as a chant, ghostly voices in the fog. This particular song is all about the atmosphere, the heavy guitars filtering through the night as the moon ascends above all; this song is an excellent break before the brutal song that follows.
And that song is “A Rotten Sun,” a four and half minute barn burner that showcases what the band can do when their leash is taken off. But it’s still chock full of huge, doomy riffs but this time propelled by an uncommon frenzy and devastating growls.
The final, and longest song, is “Suffering Pure Light,” and is my favorite on the album. It takes all the elements of the previous four songs, melts them down, then spews them forth. The drums are particularly engaging, atmospheric in their own right yet deadly as hell too. Around the 6:10 mark, the song pulls back for a brief few seconds before what amounts to melody for this song shines through the cracks with a dull light before the song finishes as crushingly as the album began.
Anthrodynia’s “Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within,” is death/doom done the right way. The rotten way. It’s uncompromisingly heavy, eerily atmospheric, and checks off all the box for what makes this genre so effective.
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