It is Autumn, what better season than this for some epic doom metal. Desolate Pathway were formed in 2014 and are hailing from London, England. This is their third full length opus. There are nine songs on this one. The music of Desolate Pathway is epic doom metal, meaning slow rolling drums, lots of epic and beautiful melodies and played tightly with emotions and energy at the same time. Vocals vary from clean singing mainly to some death metal growls like in awesome Horrors Of The Night. Lyrics delve more into horror and fantasy themed zone. I really enjoyed closing my eyes and listening to this doomy horror opus. I would recommend this opus to all fans of melody, horror and almost mystic atmosphere in some song structures. There are no filler songs on this opus and they are not long as sometimes is the case with bands of this genre. My personal favorites are The Dark Prince, epic almost instrumental anthemic Angels Without Words and Vampires Kiss. This one is a keeper! So glad to discover this band.
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.
