Sermon are Turkish band hailing from Izmir and their roots date back to 1997, but after a hiatus band reformed and this is their new full length opus. This one offers 8 songs of doom metal, basically it is melodic epic doom metal with lots of gothic influenced parts, also there are some death doom nineties influences, through some UK legendary bands’ influence. Vocals are growled but there are also some gentler clean parts and this growling so fits to guitar melodies that it is perfect. These guitar parts and double bass rolling drums create an atmosphere of darkness that you can almost touch with your hands. Lyrics are about darkness, space, inner demons, emotions deep within and one other plus is that vocalist is mainly understandable in many parts of the songs. There is also violin like for example in Flawless Entropy and calls to mind My Dying Bride, but with more melody and epic parts. Songs are pretty long but do not get boring for one second. My personal favorites on this one are: ‘Silver Splinter’ and ‘Destined To Decline’. This is doom metal just made for listening and daydreaming under steel grey January sky as the cold wind sweeps around you.
Corr Mhóna are hailing from Ireland and this is their second full length opus out with Satanath Records. This band and release really surprised me and quickly became one of my favorite listening for last two weeks. There are ten songs on this one. Music is what makes this band really special, playing mixture of epic doom metal, post black metal and melodic death metal with lots of aggression, melancholy and epic melody. There are also some classic heavy metal influences like in Banda being one of my personal favorites on this record. Atmospheric calm passages and acoustic guitar parts mix with anguished fast aggressive straight forward death metal parts only to return to epic melodic metal and back to blackened guitar work and thus creating perfect, almost mystic setting. What makes this record also special are fantastic vocals. From growls, to epic clean singing, to almost chanting, vocals are fantastic, some parts of clean singing reminded me of Emperor and their best songs, but only in clean vocal parts, this is not black metal band. This is one of my favorite releases this year so far.
I first heard Empyrium from Germany about twenty years ago. Then, every Wednesday me and couple of friends had theme metal evenings. One of my friends had a vacation house in the hills so we went there and listened to new music on tapes, one Wednesday it was doom, one was black metal, one was gothic and during one of these doom evenings I heard Empyrium´s Songs Of Moors & Misty Fields and I was enchanted by melody, melancholy, vocals, keyboards and every song was a hit and it almost brought tears to my eyes and goosebumps on my skin. Fast forward to 2021. I was so happy when I saw that this new album came out and it was a long journey to releasing it. This one offers eight epic songs of melodic mixture of doom metal with gothic, post metal influences and neofolk. Music has harsh guitars sometimes, but also many atmospheric passages, acoustic miniatures in the song structures, epic work of keyboards which only add to the grandeur and beauty. Vocals are mainly clean, sung beautifully or sometimes spoken and whispered, but there are couple of excursions into harsher vocal ranges. I love how the songs, although most of them being longer, do not get boring or repetitive in any second. Another superb album, welcome back Empyrium! 9/10
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 