Ornamentos del Miedo is a one man project from Spain and this is brand new two song e.p. with both tracks being well over eleven minutes long. This project has been in the scene since 2017 and there are three full length opuses and two e.p.-s if we include this one. The music is slow funereal doom with growling death vocals reminding me a lot of all those glorious days and early My Dying Bride releases and similar bands like awesome Thergothon back in the days. Besides doom and gloom Ornamentos del Miedo delivers epic melancholic powerful guitar melodies and slow rolling drums provide atmosphere of gloom, sadness and hopelessness with sometimes providing goosebumps on my skin with melancholic melody thrown here and there. Synth backgrounds lay soundscape that takes you and pulls you further into the music and other dimension. Both of these songs provide such richness of sound that I am really glad that I was able to discover this one. Superb doom.
You may say what you want but Darkthrone are explorers. Besides being black metal legends who released couple of milestone albums in black metal genre they decided to explore metal and musical boundaries and not giving a fuck what anybody thinks about that. Main occupation of Darkthrone’s music last couple of years is 80ies metal with Fenriz being an absolute encyclopedia of metal and underground. For me personally, the best phase in last couple of years of so, was more melodic punky crust phase with Circle The Wagons coming to mind immediately. On to this opus. This one contains seven songs, with one called Koboltn, West Of The Wast Forests being eerie piano synth instrumental. On this opus Darkthrone mix eighties metal with doom metal slower side of things but retaining enough melody in guitar riffs to keep songs interesting and good listening. My personal favorites are Eon 2 having such nice main guitar melody, also Kevorkian Times. There are no blast beats on this album, but there are synth parts smartly thrown in some songs, also acoustic atmospheric parts and varied yet hypnotic riffing topped with Nocturno Culto’s trade mark voice. Maybe it takes couple of listenings to get to love this album, but once you do it, it is superb like all Darkthrone releases.
Zerfall are hailing from Italy and it is a relatively new band, but the members have served in the scene in entities such as Ras Algethi or Enoch and this is the new opus and it contains seven longer songs. Music of Zerfall can be described as blackened doom death metal with thundering distorted bass, many slower rolling drums parts of the songs and some post black metal influences. Special mention goes to keyboard work which is awesome, creating such bleak and horror atmosphere like in my personal favorite Symmetric Caustic Waves, which, although it is an instrumental is an atmospheric masterpiece. Listening to it I feel like walking through the night time street with that uneasy feeling that someone is watching you from the shadows. Vocal lines on this album belong more into death metal side of things being growled with occasional scream here and there. Songs like Neutron Star Company(NOVA) or Zeitgeist Vernichtung are sure to become your personal favorites. This is a superb blackened doom death opus.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 