Death-Doom Metal

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    October Tide – A Thin Shell (2010)

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    Originally a side project of Jonas Renkse and Fred Norrman from Katatonia, October Tide took by surprise the Death/Doom Metal world back in 1997 with their legendary album “Rain without End”. The band disbanded from around 2000 and finally returned in 2009 with only Fred Norman (not anymore with Katatonia) and Tobias Netzell (of In Mourning) on vocals.

    “A Thin Shell” marks the band’s return to the Metal scene and it’s a great comeback album for all of us Death/Doom Metal fans. With seven songs and over 40 minutes of music, this release has all the ingredients to make it a classic of the genre and continue the legacy of October Tide.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Daylight Misery – Promo (2009)

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    While checking our ‘to review’ folder of digital promos sent by bands we happened to stumble upon this little gem that was hiding underneath the piles of albums we get every month. Daylight Misery is a band from Greece that plays a mean combination of Death/Doom Metal with some Gothic Metal influences.

    Highly focused on the guitar work rather than the keyboards, the band creates a very depressive atmosphere (the part we love the most from the genre). When the keyboards are used, they are like the icing on top of an already delicious cake. This 3-song promo is probably one of the best we have received in quite a while and their upcoming release “Depressive Icons” sounds like it will be even better.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Fall of Empyrean – A Life Spent Dying (2010)

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    After a waiting period of 6 years between releases Fall of Empyrean is finally back, with their crushing Death/Doom Metal. “A Life Spent Dying” has been waiting to be released for a few years now, and finally Grau records picked it up for release. The band still plays Death/Doom Metal like in the old days and kills at it.

    “A Life Spent Dying” is a pretty decent successor to “A Darkness Remembered”, the band features their characteristic sound crafted with “Anhedonia” with only a few tweaks to make it sound even better. Most of this album is very formulaic; take for example the song “The Air is Still” which showcases every Death/Doom Metal trick in the book. This approach does not reduce the quality of music created by Fall of Empyrean, and take anything from this great release.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Sortilegium – Unholy Land (2010)

    It’s nice to finally hear a decent new release in one of my favorite genres: Death/Doom Metal. Seems like most bands that played this genre have died down, or moved on to play Funeral Doom Metal (a genre that bores the shit out of me). But thanks to Mr. Tregor Russo and his band Sortilegium, the candle for this style of music is still lit.

    Sortilegium has been and on and off band, and finally is back with “Unholy Land” a 4-song promo that has made me dig up my old Paramecium, etc albums. After this statement you can figure out how good this release is.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    The 11th Hour – Burden Of Grief (2009)

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    The 11th Hour is a new project formed by Ed Warby from Gorefest and Ayreon fame, in this recording he played ALL instruments and even clean vocals, and ‘growls’ where provided by none other than Rogga Johanson. So all of this looks great on paper and it sounds pretty good except for one little detail: The god awful clean vocals, they make my want to rip my hairs out.

    Musically the band is top notch since they manage to mix Death/Doom Metal with more traditional Doom metal to perfection, and it would have worked perfectly if they had gotten a better clean singer. Ed Warby is a great musician but in my opinion he’s better off without singing. The clean vocals are not out of tune, or anything terrible, it’s just the sound they have I find it extremely annoying for this music and they ruin the ‘other half’ of the (guttural) vocals provided by Rogga.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Lethian Dreams – Bleak Silver Streams (2009)

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    I have always been an extreme fan of Death/Doom Metal bands and all of the variants of the genre, so I’m usually very harsh when reviewing newer bands. So this being said “Bleak Silver Streams” is a brilliant album that I will start to praise greatly in the next few paragraphs.

    This French band features members of several other brilliant Doom Metal bands like Remembrance and Before The Rain. Having only released two brilliant albums this band shows great promise to keep releasing amazing albums.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Forest Stream - The Crown of Winter (2009)

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    Have you ever wondered what a band with multiple personality disorder (MPD) would sound?, well look no further since Forest Stream has a very interesting case of MPD.“The Crown Of Winter” features 4 tracks of amazing Gothic Death/ Doom Metal, 2 tracks of Melodic Black Metal (Emperor style) and one intro and one outro tracks.

    While the band excels at both styles, it’s still pretty weird to listen to such a shocking change from one song to the other!. Luckily for them I’m not a genre purist and only reviews one type of music well and trashes the rest, since this would have been very negative for this amazing release.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Desire - Crowcifix (2009)

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    Desire is an excellent Doom/Death Metal band that has been around for 15 years. And It makes me wonder why no label has picked up this band. Seven years have passed after the brilliant last full length "Locus Horrendus - The Night Cries Of A Sullen Soul" and this Portugese band is back with a Majestic an EP called "Crowcifix".

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
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    Gate Of Sorrow – Enter Through The Gate (2009)

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    There are only a handful of releases that I truly enjoy every month, and “Enter Through The Gate” is one of them. This Czech band play a great Gothic /Death / Doom Metal, and their album has an impressive quality, musically and production wise. This album features nine powerful tracks that will blow the fans of the genre away.

    Behind the luscious keyboards and amazing female vocals, there is a very well defined drum line and distorted guitars that make this release great from beginning to end. After several releases under a different name (Gate) and from what I can read on their site, different musical style changes, they have released one of my favorite albums of this year.

    • Posted By: Dark Emperor
    • Comments: 0

    Autumnia – O’ Funeralia (2009)

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    This release is one of the finest Death/Doom metal albums I’ve heard in a few years. Their music is an ode to sadness, because it creates a great depressive feeling that this music should create. Autumnia is a two man band from Ukraine, and for this release they enlisted the help of other three musicians to record piano, bass guitars and violin.

    Everybody that knows me knows that I’m a sucker for a good Death/Doom metal release, and this one will make its way to my favorite albums list. Fifthly minutes of pure depressive music make this album a brilliant, much needed release.

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