Depths of time; the darkness of age; an abyss of years. All these images are pertinent when discussing both Inverloch‘s music and their career. Summoned from twenty years ago, the band has risen in the ashes of diSEMBOWELMENT. Connected to both their past and a furious vision of the future, their music is mine-deep, caves apart from most of the releases that are released nowaday. “The Empyrean Torment” is a monstrous extolling, thunderous guitars backed by vocals so low, they must drive nails into the ocean floor.
via Stereogum.
Joining forces with bands like AHAB and Yob, Inverloch seek to continue, build upon and fuel the return to the roots of doom metal that has marked the past few years. From the first arrival of the vocals, dredged from such aural depths as to be marrow-chilling, to the faint, morose touches of guitar leads that are introduced more than five minutes into the track, “The Empyrean Torment” is a slow moving monolith that seeks to pierce your heart. Within the growing, modern doom scene, Inverloch are stacking for themselves a place that lies at the bottom ranges of what this new-yet-old sub-genre can muster.
However, that’s not all that they do. Once you’ve survived the initial onslaught, a furious barrage awaits you around seven minutes and a half in: the guitars and drums explode into intense couplings of blast-beats and riffs, while the vocals take a harrowing turn, echoing a freezing wind now rather than massive waves. Returning a bit to its earlier theme, but maintaining some of its aggressive dynamics, the end of the track is doom-death at its finest, building on the strengths of both genres.
To sum it all up, Inverloch’s upcoming album, Distance Collapsed set for a 3/4 release via Relapse Records, is set to be a crushing, complicated and highly effective album. It will probably fill this year’s eccentric slot on many an end of year list, drawing on places of human emotion which are often uncomfortable to gaze towards. In the meantime, you might try to listen to this track a couple more times to prepare yourselves, but I doubt that will aid you. If this is any indication, there will be little preparing for this beast.