This Exclusive Convocation Stream Will Leave You In Ruins
FFFIIIINNNNNNNIIISSSHHHH DDDOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
After finally dragging our withered hands away from the REPLAY button on last year’s acclaimed debut from US death-doom phenoms Spectral Voice, many of us were wondering how long we would have to wait in 2018 for a replacement of similar magnitude. A question which was resoundingly answered with Ataraxy‘s monumental Where All Hope Fades. Two months have passed since the Spanish group unravelled that soul-crushing behemoth, and while both albums were strongly redolent of the legendary Finnish death/doom scene, sticklers could argue they were missing one vital element…they weren’t from fucking Finland. Convocation make no such rookie errors. In fact, on their debut album Scar Across, Convocation make no mistakes whatsoever. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself on this exclusive album stream!
Prior to seeing this monster of an album turn up in my inbox, I’d not heard of Convocation. A cursory Metal Archives search strangely yielded no results. Who was behind this amazing record? Turns out all the instrumentation was handled by none other than Lauri Laaksonen (LL), who you might recognise as the man behind Finland‘s dark death band Desolate Shrine. And as it just so happens, LL can doom-it-down with the best of them. From the moment you hit play on Scars Across, the engrossing atmosphere envelopes you entirely, existential dread begins to swirl and cloud your mind’s eye, this is just the onset. Dense plundering chords are adorned with merismatic layers of clean guitars, spectral synths, choral cries, and even haunting piano (?) sounds, which splinter into a myriad of fragments before dissolving into oblivion; echoing the experience all good doom albums should evoke.
Comparisons are likely to be drawn to countrymen Krypts, along with the ever-enduring influence of genre-giants dISEMBOWELMENT, but perhaps most interestingly, I can hear remnants of the legendary Thergothon lurking in the deep of this record. Be it in the subtle way in which the ephemeral clean vocals grace certain moments with a sliver of light, or buried within the lengthy depress of that sombre-sounding organ, there are moments during Scars Across which will transport you directly to the days when doom wasn’t predominantly the domain of doped-out dropkicks playing down-tuned pentatonic blues riffs in a Tramadol-induced torpor. Yes, Convocation are the real deal, and by the time you finish the album’s epic title track finale, you’ll know why.
Order Convocation‘s Scars Across before its March 30th release through Everlasting Spew Records directly (CD & T-Shirt/Longsleeve bundles available) or on Bandcamp.
