(written by Islander)
Darkness. A life devoid of hope.
For it is that light, that semblance of hope,
which destroys.
There is not hope in this moment,
It is not found in the past,
Nor realised in our death.
The burden of such unrelenting pain,
denies our truth, our healing.
Existing as fragments of ourselves,
broken, beyond repair,
…yet clinging on for better days.
Those dark words form a preamble to the song we’re about to premiere. It’s from Dimensions Of Chaos, a new album by the Bulgarian funeral doom project Destruction of Orion, which will be released on November 27th by Aesthetic Death.
For those of you who may be new to Destruction of Orion, it is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Tehina Spasova. The project has released two previous albums, Decreasing Brightness in 2024 and States Of Horror in 2025.
Those albums are the principle subjects of a pair of interviews conducted by our Comrade Aleks, which provide a lot more insight into the artist and the themes of the music. You can find those here.
As Aleks recognized when approaching those interviews, Destruction of Orion’s approach to funeral doom is distinctive, in the messaging as well as the music. To be sure, it hasn’t been a comfortable approach, despite the music’s renderings of inner pain in often beautiful terms. And the new album doesn’t diverge but instead (as the label portrays) “continues the project’s deeply personal exploration of grief, anguish and emotional collapse”.
The idea expressed in the preamble quoted above gives meaning to the title of the song you’re about to hear — the idea that hope is often a fantasy, and that clinging to dreams of better days can bring only renewed and more crushing disappointments. Here are the song’s lyrics:
Time goes by while longing for better days,
Life fades away slowly.
This lonely moment will stay
And bring draining dreams, endless pain,
Every breath will burn me.
Until this torment ends
I will hold onto my blaring guilt,
My inner hell.
Then my form won’t feel again,
Then my eyes won’t see.
As I’m getting closer to my death,
I am left with regrets.
Boundless shame, endless grief,
And longing for a past that never was,
Grasping for all the lies
That would make me feel like I mattered.
The song as a whole presents a gradual accretion of layers, ingredients that contrast with each other but create a desolate union. It begins with a slow piano melody that carries a ghostly ring, a simple melody whose haunting reverberations create an extremely forlorn and lonely mood.
While that melody persists Destruction of Orion adds other reverberations — tones of immense groaning heaviness on the opposite end of the sonic spectrum and ethereal shimmering sensations that float even higher above the piano.
In addition, the drums inflict crushing blows and whip-like cracks, and when the vocals arrive they vent the words in tormented howls, accompanied by vast wailing melodies and shrill, feverishly quivering fretwork. Angelic choral voices also arrive, adding to the music’s unmistakably unearthly aspects, providing yet another contrast to the titanic strides in the lower end of the range.
Destruction of Orion also transfers the song’s miserable melody into the hands of a soulful but still deeply stricken guitar solo that slowly winds its wailing way forward through the crushing gloom, the shattering vocals, and the celestial sound of strings.
No doubt, those shimmering stratospheric melodies are beautiful and yearning in their mood, but also distant and unreal, like the light from stars that can never be touched.
Dimensions Of Chaos will be released by Aesthetic Death in both digibook CD and gatefold 2LP formats, as well as digitally. The album’s devastating cover art was created by MassiveNode, and it includes internal artwork by Rhys Knight.
The same label has also recently reissued Destruction of Orion’s second album States of Horror in a digibook CD edition. For more info about all of this, and to place orders, check the links below.
Also below, we’re including a stream of the new album’s first single, “Retribution“.
AESTHETIC DEATH:
https://aestheticdeath.bandcamp.com/
https://www.aestheticdeath.com/
https://www.facebook.com/aestheticdeath.uk
DESTRUCTION OF ORION:
https://destructionoforion.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/destructionoforion/