Doomed For Metal Reviews

It has been said that without dark, there is no light and without light, there is no dark.  Finland's Convocation and their third full length album, ' No Dawn for the Caliginous Night ' disagrees vehemently with this quote.  There is another kind of darkness.  A darkness that existed first and will be the last thing to exist.  A darkness so bleak, so black, that light itself is absorbed and spat out, adding to its own growing and ever infinite coldness. For their third full length album, the band still brings funeral doom and long form songs.  However, the up in quality to this album from their previous one ' Ashes Coalesce ' is greater than the distance between that album had from their debut, " Scars Across ."  By finding a balance between the two albums, Convocation have easily created their heaviest album to date yet also the one with the most progression. In small, subtle increments,  Convocation has stretched their sound to a much more dynamic n...

This album is truly a terrifying and evil experience.  This death metal isn't really rotten or filthy to the core but instead just straight up bleak and dismal.  There isn't any hope to be had other than the hope to be pummeled to death while drowning in your own tears.  This has the riffs and energy of ODSM, the atmosphere of a snuff porn, and the despondent requiem of doom metal.   Inward To Gethsemane by Vastum

Who says funeral doom has to be presented in long form only?  Although I love a long song as much as next doom fan, not every song or album needs to break records for the longest piece of music ever written.  It's easy to think otherwise, but the sound of funeral doom doesn't really have anything to do with the runtime of a song.  It has to do with the mood, atmosphere, the approach, and the straight up goddamn permeating miasma of sorrow.   Morning Dead 's ' Desde el Otro Lado ' has all this down to a very fine detail and they don't have to spend twenty minutes per song to get the message across.  The longest song is still under the six minute mark and the overall runtime of these tracks is around 40 minutes.  This is a different approach to funeral doom than most bands of the style would take.  This shorter approach to the genre allows the band to only include what needs to be here.  There isn't any moments of three minute long silences or ...

DYSSEBEIA  play what could be described as progressive blackened death metal.  When the word "prog" pops up in a band's description, a lot of people assume the worst.  Is it going to be pretentious?  Will it have lots of overstuffed filler that only matters to the band?  Will the album be too long, one song stretched across six full-lengths, an EP, short story and a three season tv show that was cut short and ended on a cliff hanger? Joking aside, DYSSEBEIA don't have any of that.  This eight track album has a tight run time of 43 minutes, the band making the most of it.  There isn't any note or passage on these songs that doesn't need to be there and there is nothing the listener needs to skip.  The song structures aren't hindered by conventional means but they still make sense within context of the album.  The album twists and turns as it moves along.  The ever evolving songs feature variations of often gorgeous melodies, ever changing...

      SolNegre ’s ‘ The Spiral Labyrinth ’ is so good I almost cried the first time I’ve heard it.  Doom has been on an upswing in recent years.  Just when I think it may have reached its peak (I’m a damn fool, I know), an album like this comes around and completely blows me away.  My love for anything under the doom umbrella isn’t a secret, neither is the fact this style of melodic Gothic death/doom was the type of doom I got into first.       So it isn’t a surprise that I’m giving this such high praise but this work is so grandiose within every element of its genre, it represents its sound so well, that even if I didn’t like doom or wasn’t familiar with the genre, this would still put me down on the floor.    Considering former Helevorn members Rigel ( guitarist) and Guillem (Bass) are part of this band, I never expected it to be anything less than stellar but this....this is a monumental album. These men, alongs...

  SONUS MORTIS is an extreme metal band from Dublin, Ireland.  It is actually a one man project from Kevin Byrne . He started the band in 2013 and ‘Of Red Barren Earth’ is his seventh full length album, in addition to a demo release in 2013. I first discovered SONUS MORTIS way back in 2016, when I reviewed the masterful ‘Hail the Tragedies of Man.’ It was among the first albums I reviewed and the band has never had a dull moment since then.  With that being said, Byrne has managed to once again surpass and raise his own bar with ‘ OF RED BARREN EARTH ,’ because it is the best SONUS MORTIS album yet. The early years of the band had a doom sound but as the band grew so did the influences, incorporating symphonic, black, melodic and death metal elements.  ‘ OF RED BARREN EARTH ,’ returns the project to its doom roots while still retaining all the progression made over the years.  Some of the keys/symphonics even add a folkish flavor to the music, such as the b...

     Laguna is a stoner/doom metal band from Barcelona who are launching their latest release, ' Of Men and Myths .'      I haven't heard of this band before I was sent this promo but goddamn does it rock.  The guitar tone is absolutely perfect---it has a heavy, thick sound that is even a little dark but it isn't overly abrasive---definitely lives up to their self professed style of "stoner rock with doom vibes."  This album has riffs for days----very groovy riffs but still captures that stoner atmosphere without fail.  The bass guitar stands out, as it should with anything within the stoner/doom umbrella; it acts as a rhythm powerhouse, along with the tight, crisp drumming, but is also incredibly heavy in its own right and ensures the songs always have that extra bit of bite.     One of the things I appreciate the most about the album is how rough the vocals are.  A lot of stoner bands go exclusively a clean, hazy sound ...