Atramentum – The Wrath Within Review

By Killjoy

I heard more than a few times in these halls that 2024 was a lean year for the doomier side of metal. Indeed, I spent the better part of my n00b period last year longing fruitlessly to review that particular flavor of death-doom that hits the sweet spot between melancholy and aggression, so this year I seized the first available opportunity to fulfill my wish. Atramentum, formed in Hamburg, Germany in 2018, released debut album Doomed in Time in 2023 during a dalliance with TeufelsZeug Records that lasted only two years. Undaunted, they decided to “go big or go home,” now self-releasing a whopping 72-minute sophomore album The Wrath Within. A brazen move, to be sure, but was it warranted?

If the band photo below is any indication, Atramentum wear their influences on their chests rather than on their sleeves. These folks are among the many disciples of the legendary Peaceville sound that My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost propagated. They excel at writing sturdy twin guitar melodies (performed by Oliver Dermann and Tim Stopar) alongside a charismatic vocal performance by Sebastian Schlenker. That said, to call them mere copycats would be a disservice. The music wields a rougher edge than the traditional Peaceville style, with plenty of fast guitar solos and death riffs. Further, Atramentum swap much of the customary gothic atmosphere for dour black metal and occasionally even blues rock, demonstrating great progression towards crafting their own sound.

The Wrath Within feels like a weighted blanket—cozy but not overly crushing or suffocating. “Higgs Field” and “Window” are on the hefty side, laden with big, ominous doom riffs and rumbling death growls. There’s plenty of mad to complement the sad; for instance, “Farewell” sees Atramentum unleash their Wrath Within in the form of aggressive drumming from Julian Gricksch and a killer guitar solo. No matter where any given moment lands on the death/doom slider, the guitar melodies are keen and enhanced enough to keep the bleakness at manageable levels. The vocal melodies, on the other hand, are where the record stumbles the most. While Schlenker’s voice is far from unpleasant, he struggles to imbue the low notes with force (“Living in Dystopia”) and his higher pitches sound tinny, particularly when double-tracked alongside his own formidable growls in the final chorus of “Lake of My Own Essence.” To be fair, there are other times when the singing fares better, but his cleans could surely use more training and practice.

Now it’s time to address the elephant in the room, both a figure of speech and a similitude of The Wrath Within’s runtime. With most of the 13 tracks lasting around 5-6 minutes, this is a case of the ideas being too numerous rather than too sizable. It helps that the songwriting is dynamic and at times unpredictable. The main guitar riff in “Emptiness Inside” and the soft bass grooves in the title track have a bluesy saunter which comes out of left field but integrates surprisingly well with the death-doom. While most songs are interesting enough individually, there is little sense of interplay between them, causing the album’s extreme length to work against it when consumed in one sitting. With so many disparate tracks, some are bound to be weaker (“Lake of My Own Essence,” “Another Life to Die”) and could have been left out to make The Wrath Within more digestible as a whole.

Atramentum is a band brimming with potential that’s realized in some ways but not in others. They are great at writing vehement songs and aren’t afraid to experiment while doing so. The Wrath Within may be overlong and uneven, but I can’t say I ever became bored while listening. The positive side of a stuffed album is that most enjoyers of downcast death-doom will likely find something appealing within. With some tightening of the clean vocals and judicious self-editing, Atramentum will be a moody force to be reckoned with.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: atramentum1.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/atramentumhamburg
Releases Worldwide: January 24th, 2025

#2025 #30 #Atramentum #DeathMetal #DoomMetal #GermanMetal #Jan25 #MyDyingBride #ParadiseLost #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #TheWrathWithin

Witnesses – Joy Review

By Thus Spoke

Since their inception in 2016, New York’s Witnesses have been a fluid entity. A constantly shifting lineup, held together by sole permanent member and mastermind Greg Schwan, where a small collection of artists lend their voices and instrumental talents to the equally shifting sounds of each album—ambient, post-metal, and doom. Joy sees Witnesses—this time as a trio, with Simon Bibby (of Thy Listless Heart) providing vocals, and Angel Hernandez percussion—turn to doom. And doom is the purported heart of Witnesses, as they claim to take primary inspiration from the British early Peaceville era of the sound. But if their past is any indicator, it would be unwise to put Witnesses in a box, because Joy leans as heavily into prog and post as it does into anything else.

Joy is comprised of five songs (plus the short “Interlude”) mysteriously described as “deeply contradictory compositions about self-actualization.” Each named “Joy,” but with a different subtitle,1 they could effectively be seen as different interpretations of the titular emotion. Joy does not sound, in general, particularly joyful, but it is not gloomy and despairing like you might expect. It is variously introspective (“Like a River”), triumphant (“I See Everything”), and dramatic (“Safety in Me”) with a blunt, clean kind of openness to the compositions, hiding nothing, transitioning crisply, but not without grace. To my ears, the likeness that strikes most strongly is to Wilderun, albeit a more pared-down version, as Bibby’s croons launch themselves upwards alongside major-modulated blackened swooshes, pounding fills, and subtle flourishes of violin. At other times, however, the doom footprint stamps itself firmly before you in the string-accented, sweetly sad sways (“Like a River”), the drooping chords pulled out in downtempo dips (“The Endings”), and the very My Dying Bride-esque spoken word (“Beyond the Sound of My Voice”). These threads combine to form a unique concoction of bare emotions and increasingly ephemeral through-lines, harder to grasp than let slip by.

Two main attributes form Joy’s strength and downfall: raw emotionality and dynamism. The first is largely down to Bibby’s vocal performance, which is at turns wistfully melancholic (“Like a River”), and commanding (“I See Everything,” “Safety in Me”). But instrumentation also plays a significant role, in doomy weepiness (“Like a River,”), or more post-metal mournful meanderings (“I See Everything,” “Interlude”). The second is gained through the aggressive progressiveness of Witnesses’ compositional style, and the impeccable percussion of Angel Hernandez. Where the former is overt—the music moving relentlessly between assertive bombast and ethereal gentleness—the latter is insidiously omnipresent; electric with shifting energies. Yet, while the force of feeling can be resonant, it frequently approaches the abrasive as the cleans are so forceful as to nearly be shouted (“I See Everything,” “Safety in Me”), or dwells in the dreaded major key. These tendencies are made unpleasant not because intense cleans and major keys are bad in themselves,2 but because they are paired with an overly gymnastic approach to songwriting, where Witnesses leaps jarringly from one mood to another, tarring the brilliance of individual passages. The most blatant example, “The Endings,” transitions through silence between styles so disparate that it wasn’t until I began more active listening that I realized this wasn’t a new song. Equally discombobulating is the sudden pathos at the endings of “I See Everything,” and “Safety in Me,” where a short passage of gentle, mournful melody and singing comes abruptly from nowhere. But this proclivity is ubiquitous and ruins many genuine moments of beauty and poignancy. The group yanks bouncy exuberance out of plaintiveness; juxtaposing half-major, half-dissonant riffs with pared-back post-metal. They repeatedly lurch from a harmonizing serenade into uncomfortably flat intonation.

It is thus the two subtler elements of Joy’s feeling and flexibility that are to be praised: those beautiful melodic moments, and the brilliant drumming. The opening track “Like a River,” arguably presents the best of the former, and is arguably the best track on the album. When it comes to percussion, it is the many, elastic fills, tumbling rollovers, and vibrant use of cymbals that provide the majority of the album’s true feeling. The drums greatly benefitted from a production that puts them right near the front of the mix but tends to relegate the guitars to a background role, draining their potency and leaving little to distract listeners in the moments when the singing—also front and center—dominates the sound palate, overly zealous.

Witnesses lives up to their name; their music feels like the stories of varied voices, potent, but unharmonised. The gorgeous, deceptive simplicity of “Like a River” gives way to a record too emotionally and tonally scattershot to stick, and it’s an immense disappointment. Those with a high tolerance for whimsical, uneven prog may find much to appreciate, but for the rest of us, there’s not an overabundance of Joy to be had.

Rating: Disappointing
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: November 8th, 2024

#20 #2024 #AmericanMetal #DoomMetal #Joy #MyDyingBride #Nov24 #PostMetal #ProgMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Wilderun #Witnesses

Avernus – Grievances Review

By Twelve

The last time Avernus released a full-length album, the year was 1997, which means the release of Grievances represents the longest delay between a debut and sophomore album I’m aware of. Twenty-seven years is a long time for fans to wait, but you have to admire the dedication! These U.S.-based doom-slingers experimented with death and doom metal back in ye olde 1990s before life and limbo got in the way. The intervening years are a long time to hone a sound, so there was no telling what to expect with Grievances—except one look at that cover should tell you we’re in for some serious doom metal. With only that to go on, I was eager to see how nearly three decades make a sophomore album.

Straightaway it’s clear that the years have been kind to Avernus, as Grievances sounds excellent. The guitars (Erik Kikke, Rick McCoy, and James Genez)1 have a great tone to them, with just the right amount of distortion to sound both heavy and clear. McCoy’s growls evoke Swallow the Sun, and even the drumming (Rick Yifrach) sounds great, with enough punch to adapt to the many shifting paces and moods adorning Grievances. Rounding out the Avernus sound, synths from Genez made subtle appearances to add layers to most tracks, sometimes acting as a lead (“Exitus”) but generally supporting the many guitars acting as the heroes. Add to this an excellent mix that emphasizes each contributing player, and we’re off to a great start within seconds of pressing play.

Grievances is primarily a doom metal album. And after 27 years, Avernus seems to have shed most of their death metal influence, except perhaps in the pacing of the music. “Nemesis” is a quintessentially modern doom song, opening with gorgeous arpeggios and subtle keys before transitioning into a melancholic theme that persists throughout the nine-minute song. This main idea allows the guitars to shine and gives the song a hopeful feel to contrast against its opening woe. Similarly, “Return to Dust” is a powerful track, with a memorable chorus and a comforting theme. These songs remind me a bit of My Dying Bride in the guitar work and prevailing sadness that hangs over Grievances. There’s a gothic influence in the compositions, a general preference for long songs, and an energy that keeps you engaged across the full runtime. It’s a strong sound, and Avernus performs it well.

The main drawback for Grievances is its length, and, sadly, the length of nearly every song on the album. “Nemesis,” “The Burning Down,” and “Quietus” all feature too-long interludes that feel mostly like filler, and few of the album’s eight-or-nine-minute songs quite justify their length. There are also several interlude tracks on the album that give the impression of recycled song ideas rather than thematic, connective tissue making things more coherent. “Open Arms” and “Plateau” are two such tracks; they’re genuinely beautiful, but at three minutes apiece awkwardly tread the line between proper song and album break. In the back half of Grievances are “Utter Uphoria,” a spacey track with touches of electronica that feel very out-of-place, and “Abandoned,” a five-minute song in which almost nothing happens. When you put all of this together, it’s hard not to regard Grievances as an album with quite a bit of bloat. Even though none of the songs are bad, I can easily picture an alternate album that is fifteen or even twenty minutes shorter, and I think I would have much preferred that version.

The good news is that there isn’t any part of Grievances that isn’t enjoyable; perhaps the lengthy break between albums meant that Avernus had a lot of ideas going into this and the vast majority of them are good. If you’re just a little less picky than me about album flow, you’ll probably enjoy Grievances significantly more than I do. Every song, band member, and idea sounds great—the ideas just tend to stay a little overlong. Still, there are much worse things than too much of a good thing and the world of doom metal will be better off to have Avernus back in it. I am certainly looking forward to seeing where they take this next.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: M-Theory Audio
Websites: avernus.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/avernusdoommetal
Releases Worldwide: September 20th, 2024

#2024 #30 #AmericanMetal #Avernus #DoomMetal #GothicMetal #Grievances #MTheoryAudio #MyDyingBride #Review #Reviews #Sep24 #SwallowTheSun