Somehow, Spring is a great season for doom and maybe even more so for stoner. You'd think this was a winter genre, with all its sadness and moroseness. But something about the explosion of life, at least for me, lends itself pretty well to fuzz, feedback, and groove, and I find myself gravitating more and more to the style as the temperatures rise.
Or maybe, as usual, this is just my brain looking back and rationalizing the fact that some really excellent releases in the styles have been hitting my ears recently. I refuse to check the data. Instead, let us jump into the riffs and bask in the excellence of some heady, hard-hitting, and slow music!
-Eden Kupermintz
Hanging Garden - Isle of Bliss
Though I've always had a vaguely Babylonian association with Hanging Garden due to the eponymous ancient world wonder, Finland's Hanging Garden were probably going for a darker theme with that very on-the-noose band name.
While death and despair exude from Hanging Garden's moniker, Isle of Bliss is a generally mellow and digestible affair. Fitting snuggly in that oh so familiar category of mellow, gothy melodic death/doom, Hamging Garden invite comparison to Enshine, Insomnium, Swallow the Sun and Kaunis Kuolematon. There is even some Amorphis to be heard in the smooth, laid back yet deceptively hooky melodicism that slips into the subconscious and takes root there.
Hanging Garden's allure is most apparent in their melodic mid-tempo numbers, like "Isle of Bliss" and "To the Gates of Hel". While some of the riffing is fairly paint (pained?) by numbers, a multi-faceted vocal approach and an excellent ear for dynamic transitions and atmosphere allow Hanging Garden to create a full and engrossing tapestry of style and substance.
As the album strides on "The Blights Nine", a hook-teethed blackened gothic beauty with a brooding, heavy start and an anthemic finish seductively dangles the bait, before the blackened Amorphis formula of "Arise, Black Sun" sinks in the hook.
Aside from a relatively weak opening track, if this style is a much of a comfort pick for you as it is for me I wholeheartedly recommend this slab of saccharine sadness.
-BK
CAVS - Sojourn
I’m breaking a few of the rules by writing this album up here but guess what - there’s nothing you can do to stop me! The first rule I’m breaking is that this album is not quite Doomsday material. It’s not doom and it’s not stoner, it’s not even sludge or post-metal. But there is something very psychedelic about the type of jazz that CAVS has created on this release. And it is a jazz release, don’t get it wrong - there are many wind instruments, a prominent piano, smooth drums, and an overall predilection for the type of warm, contemplative jazz I’ve grown to love over the last few years.
So what is it doing here? Like I said, there’s something faintly psychedelic and progressive about this album. Maybe it’s in some of the groovy drum lines. Maybe it’s the synths, the proliferation of different types of drums, the scintillating percussion or the trippy guitar lines. And maybe it’s the cover art, technicolor, botanical, and redolent as it is. Probably, as the cliche goes, it’s everything at once which serves to create a far-wheeling, hazy, humid, and mysterious air that makes me want to include this album here.
Just listen to “Emerald Nile” if you want to be convinced and hell, while we’re at it, you’re going to tell me that “Emerald Nile” is not an excellent name for a strain of weed? Regardless of whether I’ve convinced you or not, Sojourn is an excellent release for anyone who loves well constructed and executed instrumental music and isn’t that what we’re all here to enjoy? Give this one a spin and open your mind; I’m sure you’ll see the many inflection points that this has with the rest of the bands that grace the fabled halls of this column. And hey, even if you don’t, you still got some excellent music out of it so...you’re welcome.
-EK
SolNegre - Anthems for the Grand Collapse
And now for something that breaks exactly zero rules and firmly belongs within the pages of Doomsday - SolNegre majestic and singular effort at atmospheric, even funereal, doom. It's been a while since Oromet released The Sinking Isle, the last massively slow album of doom that's grabbed my attention. Therefore, I was probably primed for Anthems for the Grand Collapse, my heart yearning for the kind of unfurling, crystalline chords that dominate its compositions. But to be honest with you, even if I wasn't ready for it, the album would have grabbed me - it's that good.
Atmospheric doom is one of those genres where it's hard to pinpoint why one album works and not the other because, on the surface of it, to the uninitiated, everything sounds the same. But Anthems for the Grand Collapse is a perfect example in how that's just not true; it's a showcase of how to effectively write albums that feel overwhelming and grandiose even when they only run barely over forty minutes (!). At the core of this one, for me, lie the more contemplative, quieter moments; SolNegre are masters at picking apart the themes that run through the heavier sections and letting them breathe, which really drives home the melancholy and introspection that runs through the compositions.
There are also excellent vocals, pristinely produced bass and drums, and an overall sense for what makes the romantic melodies of this type of titanic doom work. Yes, it's subtle and that is the beautiful irony of a genre writ so large, where success lies in the finer details. Anthems for the Grand Collapse has those details in droves, painted in the spaces between solos in heart-wrenching synths, hiding in turns of phrase that repeat through the work, and nestled within deeply moving, somber passages. This is an album to get lost in and I urge you to do so. Oh, and also - that cover art is so good.
-EK
Desert Collider - Orphans of the Sky Part I: Generation Ship
This one doesn't need a lot of words. Desert Collider have created an excellent album in the form of Generation Ship, working within the ever-fruitful spaces of sci-fi stoner metal concept albums. If you're looking for an expansive journey through space on the back of some monstrously loud guitars and all the fuzz a desert planet could need, this is the one for you. Play it loud, close your eyes, and go someplace else. Seriously, these guitars are so loud and so fuzzy. Delectable.
-EK