(written by Islander)
Spring has begun to bloom in the southern hemisphere but here in the far northern latitudes fall is creeping ahead and winter looms behind it. It is time to bid farewell to summer, even if many of you closer to the equator are still baking in the sun’s oven. Time to welcome the fall of dead leaves, the chill that cools the skin, the spreading blanket of night. What better way to greet the circling of the seasons back into gloom than with a split recording named Latitudes of Sorrow by two formidable bands proficient in the alchemies of doom?
Surely these two bands will be known to a great many discerning listeners based on their previous discographies, and certainly well-known to our own visitors based on how often we’ve written about them here. One of them is the Italian band Shores of Null, and the other is the Finnish band Convocation. Their music is distinctive, and distinctively different from each other, and yet the pairing of them together in this new split was an inspired choice: They are kindred spirits.
To help introduce this compelling new split in advance of its November release by Everlasting Spew Records, what we have for you today is the premiere of one of Convocation‘s songs, one named “Empty Room“.
photo by Roni Sahari/Kammio Visuals
Convocation‘s songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lauri Laaksonen (who is also behind Desolate Shrine and Pestilent Hex) gave us this comment about the song:
“In an empty room, memories linger and turn golden. Yet even if life goes on and happiness re-emerges, this place remains lightless and empty. One might be able to leave the room behind – or be dragged down within it.
“This song, originally intended for the latest album No Dawn for the Caliginous Night but ultimately not included, has been partly remixed and is now released alongside a completely new Convocation track.”
As before, Lauri‘s vocalist partner in Convocation is Marko Neuman. He expresses this song’s eloquently doleful and dreadful lyrics in gutturals of cavernous depth, gritty howls of torment, and mind-shearing screams of pain.
The music around those shattering vocals creates a morphing tapestry of despondency, desolation, and despair, an excursion through peaks and valleys of intensity, ranging through the poignance of a single heart slowing toward stillness and the immensity of calamity and collapse on a vast scale.
At the outset ragged notes create a bleak high/low harmony of moaning and wailing frequencies. The drums explode, rumbling and clattering, and that scarring harmony (scarring in both sound and mood) intensifies into an even more distressing experience. But haunting, spectral notes also reverberate against a backdrop of throbbing beats and grimly heaving chords, and the lead guitar gives voice to a heart-breaking lament.
The music also rises and expands as the vocals fracture into agonies, manifesting loss on a grand scale. An elegant multi-instrumental melody pierces the listener through decibels of scouring and stomping heaviness down below, an uplift of yearning and grief. The dismal opening melody also returns, grim and be-gloomed in its abrasive aspect, fronted by vocals of shattering wretchedness.
The intensity of the song ebbs and flows throughout, creating changing patterns of shadow, and it might end either way, either isolated and lonely in its bereavement or towering and crushing. How it really ends is with a sonic apocalypse, a calamity of booming and ramming force, riffing that surrounds the listener and burns, and screams that somehow reach an even higher and more terrorizing pinnacle of despair.
Convocation‘s side of the split was recorded and mixed at The Desolate Dungeon, and mastered at Trollhouse Audio. Lauri Laaksonen created the cover art for the split, with layout by Giorgio Spevo. Split mastering and vinyl mastering was done by Carlo Altobelli at Toxic Basement.
Everlasting Spew will release Latitudes of Sorrow on November 21st on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats, and they plan to release a vinyl edition in the spring of next year. Pre-orders will open today. Keep an eye open in the weeks to come for music off the split from Shores of Null.
PRE-ORDER:
Physical: https://bit.ly/42PbNY8
Digital: https://everlastingspew.bandcamp.com/album/latitudes-of-sorrow
CONVOCATION:
https://www.facebook.com/convocationdoom
SHORES OF NULL:
https://www.facebook.com/shoresofnull
EVERLASTING SPEW:
https://www.facebook.com/everlastingspew
https://everlastingspewrecords.bandcamp.com