(What follows is DGR‘s extensive review of Major Arcana, a new album from Novembers Doom that’s set for release on September 19th by Prophecy Productions, with videos for all three pre-release singles at the end)
The sadness of September continues unabated with all of your favorite titans of melancholy seeming to have chosen this month as the time to unleash their latest creative opus upon the world. Chicago’s November’s Doom have long earned their right to stand among the mightiest in this arena, with a career of well over thirty years and – now – twelve albums to their name.
Their newest one Major Arcana sails into port after a six-year journey for the Novembers Doom crew since their previous release Nephilim Grove in 2019. Major Arcana delivers unto its listeners ten songs and about fifty-six minutes worth of music.
all photos by Matthew Gregory Hollis
When a band such as Novembers Doom reach this point in their career there is a sense that they’ll settle into an artistic groove and the music will often be “what they’re good at”, without aspiring to stretch further than that. However, although Novembers Doom have always been a somewhat quiet, cast-in-shadow, unassuming creature over their career, they’ve always been somewhat adventurous with each release.
Novembers Doom are a “force” but it always seems like people are surprised by their sudden reappearances with new material, as if it wasn’t something we should be looking forward to each time. They never seem to get the full credit they deserve for such a consistent and varied body, but perhaps after an impressive album like Nephilim Grove and now the group’s newest release Major Arcana perhaps they will find themselves elevated in the discussion beyond “long-running, accepted, large influence upon the genre” to “statue placed in the death and doom pantheon”.
Perhaps it is that Novembers Doom are often on the other side of the death-and-doom-melancholy divide than where the world wants them to be at that particular moment. Theirs is a career that has both danced on the high-wire and sailed off of both sides to varying degrees, often more in favor of a gothic-inspired death metal than the mournful and clean-sung odes so many of their peers have chosen over the years.
Vocalist Paul Kuhr has cut an imposing figure on stage during that time and also has the voice to match. When you have such a mighty roar why would you never use it? Novembers Doom songs are buttressed by the fact that there is a guaranteed hefty growl just waiting in the wings, like a blade stashed in somebody’s sleeve ready to strike at any moment. That low-sung and building-shaking growl have become integral to the Novembers Doom sound and that does not change on Major Arcana.
Even with the six-year gap between them you could view Major Arcana as a direct continuation of Nephilim Grove before it — not as the moodier and darker younger sibling like so many releases have often paired together but more as a targeted expansion of the heavier moments that were apparent in its predecessor. The “Death” side of the death/doom genre descriptor for the band is the one that wins out big here. It’s not wall-to-wall blastbeats or thundering circle-pit riffs but Novembers Doom aren’t dragging people through misery and mud; you’re starting the album buried in it and are going to spend the next fifty-six minutes on an auditory journey of digging your way out.
Novembers Doom are particularly good at delivering the Novembers Doom sound, which is to say that even though a clear artistic strain runs through the songs there is also a keen awareness of what makes them tick as a group. In this case, that main core finds itself bent and contorted to fit into the somewhat ambitious thematic arc that defines Major Arcana. It is one of complicated and oppressive sadness that grasps from each potential moment something that could’ve gone wrong in someone’s lift and transforms it into music.
Even opener “June” – which on any other album is your atmospheric scene-setter – multitasks in setting the table for this album, and also spelling out how one of the traditional “summer” months is going to be re-cast in a darker light for the course of this album. The following “Major Arcana” leans heavily on the dramaticism as Novembers Doom rumble through a chugging riff and backing rhythm before spilling into a chorus that attempts to let its vocalist soar – the “how long have I been gone?!” part that leads into each chorus is impressive – before beginning the classic Novembers Doom descent wherein every part goes lower and lower until we’ve returned back to center and we’re rotating between low-register, clean-intonation, and percussive bark. That ascent and decline within each song is the dynamic that assists in getting the six-and-a-half minute title track stuck in your head.
Novembers Doom are not a band to betray their sensibilities and so treat every song as if it were its own pocket universe of poetry. Working in tandem with that flair for the dramatic, they strike gold at least once or twice an album, to such a point that constructing a setlist must now be a nightmare. Even though it’s clearly the longest song and meant to be the biggest journey that you undertake on Major Arcana, “Bleed Static” is a massive highlight on this album. It is an intricate song whose early moments swirl around an echoing guitar and distorted vocal effect, as if the band were appearing to you through a haze of smoke that gives way to a powerful early chorus.
The mood of “Bleed Static” is hushed in those early-goings until the climactic segment of the song around the five-minute mark fully kicks in. You get teases and previews of it as the band exhort their listeners to save them during the chorus, but it is the massive guitar solo that Novembers Doom have been building up to that begins the full snowball-becoming-avalanche signal for the closing part of the song. “Bleed Static” is a massive song that somewhat overshadows the equally-heavy and more goth-rock tinged “Chatter” that follows. Broken out on its own, “Chatter” is an up-tempo – by comparison – rocker in the face of its heftier brother before it, and is the kind of pick-me-up the back third of the album needs.
This is also why earlier on in the bounds of Major Arcana we also have interesting moments. “Mercy” and “The Dance” carve a path around each other, one mostly clean-sung and slow, and the other clustered around a stuttered guitar riff for its opening. “Mercy” is a song meant to plead with the listener, and so favors the doom side of Novembers Doom chosen namesake, whereas “The Dance” near-recklessly barrels its way through its run time.
“Mercy” is as close to a ballad as you’ll get here and “The Dance” is meant for headbanging. The two working side by side makes for a show early on in the disc. It shows a Novembers Doom who aren’t going to settle into one mood for the full course of Major Arcana. Things will be heavy both emotionally and on the auditory front; the particular hows, wheres, and whys of said accomplishment will change depending on the song. To Major Arcana’s credit, Novembers Doom keep things varied enough that it doesn’t become a slog wherein one side is favored more than the other.
The band make a choice in letting the lasting impression of Major Arcana rest on the closing song of the album, “XXII”. It’s tempting to paint this as an “of course, it’s the last song” scenario, but “XXII” ties itself back around to “Major Arcana” earlier on in the album. It shares similar song flow – though points to Garry Naples who puts in a lot of work on the cymbals here – and an ascent/decline structure.
“XXII” is an “in summation” style of song that bookends the gothic-poetry by way of death and doom misery that is Major Arcana. Gargantuan yells and hefty snare hits abound over the course of “XXII” with some tasteful clean guitar in the bridge being the one moment wherein the intensity of this subsequent bout with depression lets itself up for a bit. The lead guitar melody that appears at 3:50 in the song is criminal in just how infectious it is.
Major Arcana is an album of iteration. Novembers Doom continue to remain adventurous in their sound but this is a release that recognizes they have a solid core to start with from previous albums and can build upon it from there with new strange and mutated angles. The thematic concept tying itself around arcana for a few songs provides Novembers Doom new room to draw allegory as event within their lyrics and make it so that it seems we’re sitting within a windowsill penning down our thoughts while staring out at the rain.
Novembers Doom show off an expert sense for melodicism as well throughout the songs highlighted here; many key moments in the strongest songs – among a burly collective of ten “strong” tracks already – are a synthesis of guitar melody and vocal work that is near undeniable. They are operating with their strengths with Major Arcana, and although it is an album fully befitting “them”, it is also one that has much to offer to the wider world of metal. Perhaps now we can make the case for the band to be fully enshrined on a very high pedestal in the halls of the death/doom hybrid crowd.
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