(The days are growing darker… which means it’s the perfect time for Andy Synn to get doomy and gloomy)
Last week I received my first promo for a 2026 release… which I guess means it’s time to start thinking about wrapping up 2025?
Don’t worry, I’m not going to be stopping writing about releases from this year just yet (I still have several albums set for release in December on the docket, for one thing) but at some point I’m going to have to shift my focus to my usual series of round-up posts.
Before then, however, I feel like I need to make amends for the fact that I haven’t spent much time focussing on the doomier side of things over the course of the last eleven months.
And the best way to do that, in my opinion, is to highlight the work of three artists – Lera (Italy), Oneironoia (Germany), and Sun of the Dying (Spain) – who I’m ashamed to have overlooked.
LERA – RÊVERIE
Haunting emptiness and bleak ambience – mixed with passages of gloomy guitar work and keening, Katatonia-esque melodies – is the name of the game on the debut album from intriguing Italian quartet Lera.
Comprising four hauntingly hypnotic pieces of Post-Metal-inflected Doom (have we started using the term “Post-Doom” yet?) interspersed with a series of atmospheric interludes which serve to further enhance the record’s not-considerable cinematic sensibilities, Rêverie favours the slow-burn over sudden impact, as immediately evidenced by the brooding beginning of “Dead Flowers”, which takes it times to lace together multiple layers of moody ambience, melancholy melody, and mesmerising vocals over the course of nine-and-a-half nuanced and intricately arranged minutes.
And while there are undeniably moments of cathartic clarity scattered across the album – both “Sonder” and “Of Lights & Shades” build towards a compelling crescendo, only to collapse back into breathless solemnity right at the moment of release – the focus remains firmly on crafting a “heavy” experience more through the use of shade and shadow (much of “Doppelganger”, for example, could pass for A Swarm of the Sun at their most sombre and subdued) than volume and distortion.
It won’t be for everyone, of course – a work of “art” like this is pretty much guaranteed to be divisive – but anyone willing to fully immerse themselves in it will hopefully discover a way to enjoy the silence all the same.
ONEIRONOIA – THE GREAT RESIGNATION
In contrast to the preceeding album, The Great Resignation is all about grim, gruelling sonic weight, with each of its four extensive tracks designed to induce an almost spiritual state of gloomy fatalism through their use of mantra-like repetition and rumbling, ritualistic rhythms.
And while the band’s particular brand of “Liturgical Blackened Doom” can definitely be a demanding listen – the shortest track here, the gritty, Celtic Frost influenced “Finis Sub Cornibus (Labyrinth I)”, is just under ten minutes of lurching, low-tuned riffs and haunting, hanging chords that builds towards an unexpectedly furious finale, while the longest (opener “The Great Resignation Pt. I”) is just over thirteen minutes – there are more than enough twists and turns along the way to keep the listener engaged and immersed from beginning to end.
From crushing, slow-motion chord sequences to raw, writhing tremolo riffs, interspersed with patterns of pounding percussion and passages of eerie ambience, all topped off with an array of gritty growls, scathing howls, and hymn-like clean vocals (plus the occasional dash of whispered mystery), the songs keep moving and mutating – while still retaining their essential essence – as the build and brood and bombard the listener with waves of doomy discordance and repulsive blackened venom.
Heavy in both the traditional sense and in the oppressive, apshyxiating atmosphere it creates, it’s a massive piece of work, no doubt, yet written in such a way that it seems to pass by far more quickly (and far more compellingly) than you might expect.
SUN OF THE DYING – A THRONE OF ASHES
Last, but by no means least, Spain’s Sun of the Dying do their best to out-gloom Swallow the Sun on their third album, A Throne of Ashes (which is arguably better than anything the latter have done in some time).
Brimming with both boundless confidence – opener “Martyrs” immediately puts the band’s best foot forwards with its mix of simmering restraint and sublime power, with the gorgeous singing voice (and equally gripping, gravel-throated growls) of Eduardo Guilló elevating the song to an even higher level – and heart-wrenching emotion (the twin male/female vocals during “With Wings Aflame” display a sense of vulnerability and pathos that’s impossible to deny, or ignore) it’s an album that willingly pays tribute to its peers and predecessors without being… ahem… swallowed… by them.
Sure, there’s the occasional tonal shift that doesn’t quite work for me – the transition from the aforementioned “Martyrs” into the chunky stomp of “Black Birds Beneath Your Sky” is more than a little jarring, to say the least (especially since, arguably, “Black Birds…” is the album’s weakest cut) – and the band aren’t really doing anything new in the Melodic Death-Doom sphere, but the strength of their songwriting (the seamless ebb and flow of sombre introspection and melancholy majesty which drives “The House of Asterion”, for example, is a perfect reminder of just how good this approach can be when it really works) and the carefully crafted balance between passion and perfectionism in their delivery, ensures that there are more than enough moments here that are guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings just as much as they reverberate in your bones.