(written by Islander)
Hymns of Despair is the entirely fitting name of the debut album from Chicago-based Shrineburner. Press materials we’ve received describe the music as “earthquake-inducing”, and as “a sonic glacier of abyssal doom/sludge metal infused with fringes of psychedelic, cosmic, blackened elements”. As you will soon discover through our full streaming premiere of these six hymns in advance of Friday’s release date, those descriptions are also entirely fitting.
But of course we have slab of our own descriptions to drop on you.
photo by Tom Birch
Shrineburner are a relatively new band, one first formed in 2023 by guitarist/vocalist Peter Norman and drummer Brent Favata. Following the release of their 2024 debut EP Solitude, Edward Hamel took over on drums and CJ Johnson joined on bass, with Peter Norman still in place at the front of the band. This trio worked together to create the album we’re about to present.
Lyrically, Hymns of Despair “explores dark topics like general worthlessness in a dying world, organized religion being an ever-growing plague, and the general anxieties of existence” (to again quote materials we’ve received). And we have this statement to share from Peter Norman:
We’re really thrilled with the collaborative foot we’ve put forward with this release, encapsulating our most raw and powerful emotions as a collective, while staying true to our roots. There is truly no greater feeling than releasing genuine music that amplifies our emotions and brings community together. Whether it’s monstrous riffs, meaningful lyrics, or just pure anger that you’re after — this record has something for everyone. We hope to see you at a show in the future and thank you all so much, from the bottom of our hearts, for your support.
References to earthquakes and glaciers in motion are fitting because Shrineburner’s riffs are often colossally heavy, powerfully surging, and ruinous. They deploy a “wall of amps” sound that seems to shudder the earth like the movement of tectonic plates and to bring massive avalanches rumbling and racing down from enormous escarpments. Of course the word “crushing” comes to mind, but sometimes that word seems too timid for the intensity of Shrineburner’s Hymns of Despair.
photo by Tom Birch
Shrineburner’s rhythm section have much to do with the gargantuan heaviness of the songs. When the music surges, the drums feel like the bouncing of gigantic boulders, and the bass throbs with subterranean immensity, gouges through bedrock, and generates ruinous cascades of corrosive feedback. When the pace slows, the rhythm section sound like they could punch through thick walls with ease.
The riffing, abrasive in tone, also brutally throbs, desperately blares, and boils over in dense waves of searing sound above hurtling blast-beat percussion, and in the song’s slower passages it painfully crawls and claws or generates a miserably squirming pulse.
The emotional impact of Hymns of Despair is as weighty and unforgiving as the decibels, even when the music isn’t shuddering and shaking. The brief opening instrumental track “Void of Guilt“, for example, is viscerally bleak even though it consists of only grimly twanging notes and droning tones that seethe and shiver.
And while the first full song “Spectral Cataclysm” is both vastly longer, much faster, and orders of magnitude more destructive, it’s an emotionally harrowing experience, in part because it introduces listener’s to Peter Norton’s unhinged howls and devastating roars, and in part because it circles back to the softer timbres of “Void of Guilt“, with a twanging melody backed by a deeply humming bass and vigorously popping beats that sounds stricken with regret and grief.
photo by Graham Marcy
Shrineburner also sometimes thread the songs’ most violent episodes with shrill and piercing lead-guitar arpeggios that create contrasts with the music’s much heavier and more abrasive elements — and their wailing tones usually give voice to feelings of anguish and intense yearning.
The momentum of the music is dynamic — as already hinted at, sometimes it moves like an avalanche, at other times it staggers and crawls, and at other times it proceeds like a grim, mid-paced march. But at all times it connects with a listener’s reptile brain, the part that gets you moving without thinking about it.
Indeed, the songs’s compulsive muscle-moving aspects are part of what makes the songs captivating. But through repeating refrains they create trances in other ways too — check out the slow, wistful-sounding melody that opens the album’s longest song, “An Ocean of Broken Hope“, and then cycles forward even after the rhythm section begin to bludgeon and the vocals bellow their torment. That repeating riff digs deep even as the rhythms work your head (and body) like a pumping piston.
At nearly 13 minutes, “An Ocean of Broken Hope” is indeed the album’s longest song but it’s also the most thoroughly compelling one, one you can get thoroughly lost in, which is a testament to Shrineburner’s songwriting prowess. On the other hand, the closing title song might be the most immediately catchy track. It’s a high-energy bulldozer with a mood of defiance (and maybe even hopefulness), though it slows into a grim and determined trudge before it ends, as if to remind us that nothing good’s going to come easy.
Hymns Of Despair was recorded and mixed by Matt Russell at Altered States in Chicago, mastered by Edward Hamel at Identity Mastering, and completed with cover art painted by Joshua Hondros.
Shrineburner will independently release Hymns Of Despair this coming Friday, September 11th, digitally and on CD, with a vinyl pressing to follow later. It’s recommended for fans of Conan, Ufomammut, Amarok, Hush, Evoken, Black Shape Of Nexus, Usnea, and Iron Monkey.
PRE-ORDER:
https://shrineburner.bandcamp.com/album/hymns-of-despair
PRE-SAVE:
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/shrineburner/hymns-of-despair
FOLLOW:
https://linktr.ee/shrineburner
https://shrineburner.bandcamp.com
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https://www.facebook.com/shrineburnerchicago