Into The Abyss: To Be Lulled By Their Hands
Her voice rang by the shore, where have you gone. Violent the waves struck the strand.
Her voice rang by the path. Menacing the trees loomed above her.
Her voice rang in the woods. Dark the branches, dark the trees and fallen leaves covered the trail of her weary feet.
Her voice rang for the trees. In their silence the words suffocated.
Her voice rang no more.
Welcome to your doom, a series about doom metal, and when I feel so – something else (but always somehow related to the aforementioned genre). I know many of you are not interested in doom, and that is actually one of the reasons I have decided to write this thing. In order to showcase the great variety of different bands drawing from doom. For these purposes, this series won’t include poor attempts at Asphyx-worship a’la Ghoulgotha or discussions about boring-as-hell-but-super-loved bands like Pallbearer, unless you wan’t to talk about how much less annoying their new single is compared to either one of their albums. Because I will be including few bands on each post, these will mostly be blurbs of a not-too-long a nature. I also promise to follow this post up with more punctuality than that one “series” about power metal saw [I’m, uh, getting around to it… —Masterlord].
I’m not going to do news checkup as big as the one on TDT, but I thought it’d be nice to feature some bands I know someone out there, besides me, enjoys. Especially since I’m of the mind to not include bigger bands in the actual music section:
- Finnish atmospheric/funeral doom metal band Shape of Despair is preparing to launch their new album, as it underwent mixing late last year. I would expect them to launch a new song before Hellfest, where they are performing.
- Ahab will be hitting studio about this time to record their, so far untitled, new album.
- Ufomammut will be releasing “Ecate” on March 31st, but of course you knew this already. What, however, may be news to you (or maybe not) is that you can stream a new song “Plouton”, and check up on Christian Molenaar’s initial thoughts about “Temple”, the first song unveiled of “Ecate” here.
- Domovoyd will be unleashing their self-titled sophomore record on Svart Records, May 8th. You can stream “a short version” of the first single “Domovoyage” here.
- A great and a little odd death/doom band called Chaos Echoes is preparing to release their new album “Transient” on 4/20/2015. I hear they are getting weirder, in the meantime feel free to check up on “A Voiceless Ritual”
Coughdust
Coughdust formed in 2010 and released their debut A Means To an End last year. It’s reminiscent of some old Swedish death metal band starting to play slower and more stoner-like songs. No frills, a crushing guitar tone, and songs to back up every promise they make. This should be no surprise, given that Coughdust employs current and former members of such bands as Rotten Sound, Enochian Crescent and Corpset, these guys are no strangers to bone crunching by the mere heaviness of their song material. Coughdust will embark on a tour with Demonic Death Judge in April/May, and will release a split with the band as well. See the dates here, and keep in mind that this is an European tour so most of you will not be able to attend. The only complaint I can think of is that despite their origins and genre(s) of choice they don’t seem to be very riffy. There is no RoTW material here, sadly, but it doesn’t slow the band down.
Check their Bandcamp and Facebook.
Gravecode Nebula
Doom metal with leanings of psychedelic blackness? Sounds good to me. You know a band is good when their first release is a split with Krieg (albeit neither side is very good). Gravecode Nebula never really stops dooming while they craft their bleak atmospheres and hypnotic dirges, and is all the more effective for it. Unless, of course, you count all the times they do speed up or blast for two seconds in the middle of a dirge just for the sake of weirding things up a little bit. This approach also works very well for the band. This probably won’t “go the distance” with the majority of you, but the chosen few are in for a luxurious treat. Check their Bandcamp to support them, and like them on The Fabled Book ov The Faces.
I recommend you try “Lethal Aether”.
Öxxö Xööx
Öxxö Xööx describes themselves as experimental and flamboyant doom metal, and that is a pretty apt description, though they build their songs on the same structure as most gothic/doom bands. Their 2011 debut Rëvëürt has been one of my favorite albums lately. They’re due to release another album on May 26th, but we’ll discuss that one later. These Frenchmen (or this frenchman, whatever) sing in an imaginary language of their own making, their name translating to “69” on both, this imaginary language and binary code. As, for some reason, the French tend to do – this band could also be described as avant-garde merely for the sake of being avant-garde, but it happens to please me, so you shouldn’t be bothered by it either. Their music is both dark and beautiful, constructing the exterior of their music with harpsichords, symphonic elements, electronic music, and even black metal at times. I’ve seen Öxxö Xööx be compared to Magma, and though not thoroughly true, it warms my figurative heart.
Get ready to check your open tabs to make sure you didn’t leave multiple songs playing at once, and jam my current favorite tracks: “Ctënöphörä” and “Lïnï”*
*Unfortunately the stream here is missing the final three songs, but you can have them by buying this album.
Corpo-Mente
Corpo-Mente is, according to the band themselves, a mixture of trip-hop, acoustic music, and baroque. I’d classify it under “good” me’self. This is not doom; not even close. Why is this featured here? Because both of it’s members have been contributing to Öxxö Xööx as well. And because I like it. Formed by Igorrr (of Igorrr, naturally), who handled much of the studio work for Öxxö Xööx’s new album, and Rïcïnn (whom we shall discuss in the next edition), who contributed vocals to the aforementioned band.
Check out “Dulcin” a song “a bit different than the rest”. Strings, operatic vocals as if in pain but not hopeless. A wall of guitar appears and all hope disappears, only to be buried underneath new-found comfort.
Or you could check out “Arsalein” It’s a more easy-going effort. OR, you could check out their brand new debut video for “Fia”
UPDATE: Streaming! Full! Stab here!
That’s all for now folks, be sure to revisit this post to get hours and hours of maximum aural pleasure out of it. And Doom All Over The World.
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