(Below we have Todd Manning’s review of a new EP by London’s Final Dose, released in late January by Wolves of Hades.)
Less than a year after the release of their full-length Under the Eternal Shadow (premiered and reviewed here at NCS), London’s Final Dose is back with a new EP, Endless Woe. Under the Eternal Shadow made it on my year-end list for 2025, so this latest release deserves some attention.
Most press refers to Final Dose as hardcore-influenced black metal. While that’s not necessarily wrong, it definitely minimizes what the group actually does. Certainly, they deliver the visceral assault such a descriptor implies. Opener “Golden Chalice” blends d-beats and punk moments with savage black metal, but Final Dose manages to maintain the atmosphere of black metal as well. The opening guitar figure evokes all the frost-bitten phantoms one can hope for, and then they segue into icy blasts. But just under two minutes in, a riff enters that splits the difference between Darkthrone and Minor Threat. It all works, whether one is meditating by candlelight or dancing in a pit; these guys have the magick.
“Forsaken Armor” keeps the mood consistent, inviting the listener to engage in feral rituals, or perhaps slam a bottle of whiskey and fling it at someone. The third track, “Floresta Hostil” is where Final Dose truly steps into their atmospheric mode. The guitar work consists of a slow, icy-tremolo-picked melody while the drums are all massive toms and cymbals, truly instilling the track with a mystic atmosphere. The Ruins of Beverast comes to mind, but the production is much more “humble”, for lack of a better word. The coldness of the production is less black metal grimness and more post-punk austerity. The vocals bellow and chant, bringing the mood full circle.
“Frio” is more aggressive but is stylistically hard to pin down, at least the opening riff. The guitar strums a cold-groove but the drums seem to blast in slow motion, neither committing to an all-out assault nor something more hypnotic. The EP closes with “Tumbia Vazia”. It is an ambient piece, and if we wanted to be lazy, we would refer to it as dungeon synth. While that controversial niche genre is certainly part of the track’s DNA, the way the levels are pushed to the edge of distortion and the keys occasionally bend pitch (it’s subtle but if you listen closely…), the track borders on industrial, kind of a lo-fi neo-folk, minus the fascist posturing.
At just shy of sixteen minutes, Endless Woe feels like a complete work. I’m honestly not even done absorbing the awesomeness of Under the Eternal Shadow, but I already blasted through this EP a few times the day of its release. We can only hope these guys continue to release material at this pace, because I, for one, cannot get enough.
https://finaldose.bandcamp.com/album/endless-woe
https://www.instagram.com/finaldosepunk/