🖤 ROUND I - Phase 1 - match 46/50

Which one is the best doom metal album?

🤘 OM, Advaitic Songs, (2012)
or
🤘 Bell Witch, Four Phantoms, (2015)

➡️See pinned post on profile for the tournament rules

:mastodon: Please 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗦𝗧

🎧 YOU ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO GIVES EACH ALBUM A FRESH LISTEN BEFORE VOTING

#KingusMusicTournaments #MusicTournament #Doom #DoomMetal #KMTPoll #Music #OM #BellWitch

🖤 ROUND I - Phase 1 - match 44/50

Which one is the best doom metal album?

🤘 Bell Witch, Mirror Reaper, (2017)
or
🤘 Witch Mountain, Mobile of Angels, (2014)

➡️See pinned post on profile for the tournament rules

:mastodon: Please 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗦𝗧

🎧 YOU ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO GIVES EACH ALBUM A FRESH LISTEN BEFORE VOTING

#KingusMusicTournaments #MusicTournament #Doom #DoomMetal #KMTPoll #Music #BellWitch #WitchMountain

The #BellWitch: misunderstood spirit or ultimate petty queen? 👑 From scratching walls to roasting visitors, this #ghost has a reputation. But was she really the villain? Watch to uncover the truth! 🕯️✨ Watch the full Video: 🎥 youtu.be/Vd4jELHqhjg
#Ghosts #Hauntings #HauntedHistory #TheBellWitch

I’m squeezing every last moment out of this weekend by listening to Metal right up until midnight (and maybe beyond!)

Playing ‘Stygian Bough’ by Bell Witch.

#BellWitch #DoomMetal #Metal

Secret shame...

I ordered a poster of the Mirror Reaper artwork from artist Mariusz Lewandowski's estate (he died in 2022).

It's been sitting in a tube waiting for me to get organised to frame and hang it up.... for quite a while now.

#BellWitch #FuneralDoomMetal #Metal

Ahhh... Mirror Reaper.

If you have 83 minutes spare and want to contemplate the nature of life and loss, then this is the album.

#BellWitch #FuneralDoomMetal #Metal

I'm in a moody mood, so time for Bell Witch.

Starting with 'Four Phantoms' but we shall see where this takes us.

#BellWitch #FuneralDoomMetal #Metal

Inborn Suffering – Pale Grey Monochrome

By Doom_et_Al

As a picky young tot, my favorite meal was “Mount Mashed Potato.” Ostensibly an uninspired lump of mash on the outside, probing with a spoon soon revealed surprising chambers of peas, hidden anterooms of carrots, and lurking chasms of warm gravy, which bubbled over when released from their confinement. Tiny Doom was delighted, and more importantly, it made a meal that I would ordinarily have considered fairly bland into something exciting and tasty. It also taught me that sometimes, solid ingredients and well-prepared food aren’t enough for the fussy; you need excitement and unpredictability. So how does this all relate to a doom metal band circa 2025?

Inborn Suffering are a French outfit who have been knocking around since 2002. Like the author Donna Tartt, they release an album every decade and then go quiet. Their latest, Pale Grey Monochrome follows 2006’s Wordless Hope and 2012’s Regression to Nothingness. For those unfamiliar with obscure French doom, Inborn Suffering play a form of mournful, melodic, sadboi metal that straddles the line between doom and funeral doom. Think Second to Sun, or Shape of Despair after a Red Bull. Pale Grey Monochrome sticks to the recipe, offering up nearly an hour of gorgeous, melodic death doom to complement the dog days of the Northern Hemisphere Winter. Yet in sticking to the tried-and-tested so resolutely, excitement and originality have been lost.

The biggest issue with Pale Grey Monochrome is that, while the ingredients are solid, and the preparation absolutely fine, there isn’t much that is surprising or unique about the material. Considering how absolutely bonkers and avant-garde some French metal bands are, this is surprising. Inborn Suffering keep things entirely safe for the entire album. “From Lowering Tides” shimmers and shines with gorgeous melodies… that don’t go anywhere unpredictable. The chords rise and fall like the tides, and the pacing of the song is logical, but nothing truly stands out. This pattern is repeated throughout Pale Grey Monochrome. The title track plods along in a very listenable fashion, but lacks the hooks to embed itself into the heart.

Some readers might be thinking, “But this is how funeral melodic doom works. One doesn’t expect fireworks and dramatic changes. The music is, by definition, ponderous and slow.” And that would be fair. But the best melodic death-doom bands find some way to differentiate themselves, whether it’s through experimentation (Atramentum, Esoteric), sheer melodicism (Shape of Despair), or epic vision and scope (Bell Witch). Inborn Suffering, unfortunately, lacks anything that sets it apart. This is a pity because, in addition to the spelling of the album, there is much that the band absolutely nails. The aesthetic is spot-on: from the opening chords of “Wounding,” the material sounds sad but inviting at the same time. It’s like putting on a warm cloak in a snowstorm. Inborn Suffering also have an innate sense of pacing, and the songs all flow and coalesce logically and meaningfully. When the highs hit (The climax of “Tales From an Empty Shell,” the dissonant middle section of “The Oak”), they feel earned. Listening to Pale Grey Monochrome is never a chore, helped by a generous mix that allows the material to breathe, and the hour passes easily. It’s a testament when so much of funeral doom feels like a drag.

Pale Grey Monochrome is a very solid album with much to admire but very little to set it apart. Your enjoyment of it will vary depending on how much you value originality and surprise. In other words, Inborn Suffering have offered a hearty meal, with good quality ingredients. But this is plain ole mash and ‘taters, like you’ve had a hundred times before. If the band chooses not to wait another decade for the next album, I can provide them with a blueprint of what to do next in the form of mum’s “Mount Mashed Potato.”

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 14 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Ardua Music
Websites: inbornsuffering.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/inbornsufferingdoom/
Releases Worldwide: February 7th, 2025

#2025 #30 #ArduaMusic #BellWitch #DoomMetal #Feb25 #FrenchMetal #FuneralDoomMetal #InbornSuffering #Review #Reviews #SecondToSun #ShapeOfDespair

Wyzwanie: wysłuchać całego albumu #BellWitch.

Ich brzmienie mi się naprawdę podoba. Niemniej, wytrzymuję jakieś 30 minut zanim zaczyna boleć mnie głowa xD.

Tak na przykład, "Future's Shadow Part 1꞉ The Clandestine Gate" to świetny album. Zawiera jeden utwór, który trwa 1 godzinę i 23 minuty.

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Bell_Witch/3540336467

#DoomMetal #metal

Challenge: manage to listen to a complete #BellWitch album.

I do really enjoy their style. But I can manage something like 30 minutes or so, before getting a headache xD.

For example, "Future's Shadow Part 1꞉ The Clandestine Gate" is a great album. It consists of one track that goes for 1 hour 23 minutes.

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Bell_Witch/3540336467

#DoomMetal #metal

Anyone catching any last-minute metal shows before the year ends? 🤘
My battle vest is parked for the season 🫣
Also, what's the best new (to you) metal band you discovered this year? I found a few, and Bell Witch blew me away!
#metal #liveshows #newmusic #metalhead #discoveries #BellWitch

Ataraxie – Le Déclin Review

By Dear Hollow

Once again, as reflected in the French act’s fifth full-length, Ataraxie channels an existential crisis. Le Déclin is not just a soundtrack of its inspiration source (Ahab, Tyranny) or a dark meditation on devastation (Evoken, Bell Witch), it’s something more profound. Throughout its miasmic movements and stark artwork, I am called back to Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s opus magnum, the 1957 film The Seventh Seal, a knight’s struggle through the days of Black Plague allegorized as a chess game between himself and Death. Likewise, Le Déclin continues its predecessor’s bleak and tormented commentary on the “manipulation and obfuscation of the Masses, the cult of selfishness, dehumanization towards a parasiting [sic] virtual life, [and] global warming insolubility.” Through the lens of modern global anxiety and medieval self-flagellation, Ataraxie revels in the human torment beneath it all.

Ataraxie, while not always unique in its viscous approach to punishing death/doom, has always been far more guitar-forward, forgoing the atmospheric bells and whistles of genre stalwarts. The first full-length Slow Transcending Agony expertly balanced the weight and tempo of funeral doom with the riffs and punishment of death metal in a unique breed that maintained a unique simmering energy. However, it wasn’t until the very well-received L’Etre et la Nausée and R​é​sign​é​s that this fusion was successfully streamlined into a more palatable expression that balances tradition with punishment. Featuring three guitarists,1 more sophisticated arrangements, and penchant for melancholy and desperation alike, the minimalist emphasis remains as punishing as ever. Although Le Déclin somewhat lacks the memorability of Ataraxie’s magnum opera, four lengthy compositions complete with earthshaking thunder and melodies like the tolling of death knells nonetheless collide to create one of the best doom albums of the year. It is Ataraxie, after all.

While the overwhelm of traditional funeral doom acts like Thergothon or Esoteric is certainly intact, that weight is powerfully balanced out by the death metal guitar influence of diSEMBOWELMENT or Winter. Slow growths across mammoth sixteen to twenty-two-minute runtimes give way to glorious eruptions of crushing heaviness and haunting melodies, punctuated by patient lulls. While the lack of ambiance can be seen as a detriment in the barren no man’s land of funeral doom, Ataraxie does a fantastic job of weaponizing dynamics and more traditional death metal motifs, such as blazing tremolo and blast beats (“Vomisseurs De Vide,” “Glory of Ignominy”), chunky climactic riffs, and pulsing undercurrents of energetic percussion (“Glory of Ignominy,” “The Collapse”). While adding to the muscularity of the already colossal album, bassist/vocalist Jonathan Théry’s charismatic and haunting shrieks, shouts, and roars add to the madness, keenly aligned with desperation and fury. Le Déclin is mixed nearly perfectly, Ataraxie’s weight and gloom felt through every movement, crushing down like the empty sky.

Most impressive about Ataraxie is its ability to balance sloth, melancholy, and aggression organically, without losing its conviction to starkness—and only with the bare bones of its triple-guitar attack. Because of this, the heavy-handed melo-drama of acts like Saturnus or Novembers Doom is absent in favor of desolation, reflected in elements like effective spoken word (“Vomisseurs de Vide”) and the dynamic motifs scattered throughout. The weaponized layered plucking or strumming may sound too hammy or heartfelt on paper, but when it sounds like tolling bells (“Le Déclin”) or progressions completely devoid of hope (“Vomisseurs de Vide,” “Glory of Ignominy”), the weight of every empty note feels just as devastating as the colossal funeral doom sprawls. Closer “The Collapse” streamlines the heft and barrenness seamlessly, its first act a steady crescendo that explodes into an outright death metal assault, its second act a blastbeat-infected climax into outright despair—Ataraxie’s nearly perfect dichotomy of beautiful and punishing.

The opening title track feels slightly less memorable than its successive three cuts, due to its more straightforward rhythm, but this criticism is trivial compared to the absolute sonic and existential devastation coursing through Ataraxie’s signature sound. Attention never sways across its hour-and-fifteen-minute length, with expertly composed lulls and crescendos guiding its movements. Cutting to the bone of funeral doom with the jagged blade of death metal, it dispenses with the frivolities and atmospherics for an album that is bleak and tormented to its very core – a chess game with Death in all its desperate victories and devastating losses. It’s the soundtrack of the crushed human spirit.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Ardua Music | Weird Truth Productions
Websites: ataraxie.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/ataraxiedoom
Releases Worldwide: October 25th, 2024

#2024 #40 #Ahab #ArduaMusic #Ataraxie #BellWitch #DeathMetal #DeathDoomMetal #diSEMBOWELMENT #DoomMetal #Esoteric #Evoken #FrenchMetal #FuneralDoomMetal #LeDéclin #Oct24 #Review #Reviews #Thergothon #Tyranny #WeirdTruthProductions #Winter

The last two tracks ‘Prelude’ and ‘The Unbodied Air’ are some of my favourites. The build up in Prelude is sublime.

#BellWitch

Ok, slowing things down with some Bell Witch.

Listening to 'Stygian Bough, Vol 1'.

#BellWitch #DoomMetal

The Bell Witch legend, emerging in early 19th century Tennessee, entails the haunting of the Bell family over four years. #bellwitch #ghosts https://connectparanormal.net/2024/10/03/bell-witch-americas-most-captivating-ghost-story/

Listening to ‘Four Phantoms’ by Bell Witch.

Mirror Reaper gets all the hype, but this album is quite good too.

#BellWitch #FuneralDoomMetal

I’m ending the weekend with 83 minutes of Funeral Doom Metal.

‘The Clandestine Gate’ by Bell Witch.

#BellWitch #DoomMetal #Metal

Locusts and Honey – Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed Review

By Dear Hollow

Although professing the inclusion of funeral doom, black metal, and dark ambient, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed is a gentle album. Locusts and Honey gently ebbs and flows along well-defined lines of expectations set by patiently unwinding epics like Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper and Black Boned Angel’s The End in devastating, torturously slow and mammoth riffs, colossal percussion, and vocals from Hell. However, like these albums, there is a core of light, a glimmer of humanity that shines through the vicious and viscous. Locusts and Honey takes inspiration from the well-preserved sacrificial bog bodies of Denmark and Ireland – the macabre – and finds lessons of a life well lived – the light.

UK duo Locusts and Honey is comprised of instrumentalist Tomás Robertson of black metal acts Gergesenes, Nargothrond, and Urne Buriall, and vocalist Stephen Murray of sludge metal quartet Hooden. While influence from black and sludge can be felt, Locusts and Honey blurs the lines between funeral doom and drone in its debut, mountainous dirges pushed to a crackling breaking point, not unlike the noise in BIG|BRAVE’s latest meditation. While rooted in 90s doom styles in Corrupted, Winter, and Esoteric, black metal’s trademark rawness in acts like Darkthrone or Strid offers a scathing overtone to the slow-motion beatdown, depicting cinematic landscapes of dark ambient artists or composers like William Basinski and Henryk Górecki. While Teach Me to Live That I May Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed is far from perfect in its top-heavy design and noisy drone impenetrability, its meditative and melodic qualities make it a promising listen.

It may feel counterintuitive to praise a drone/funeral doom album for its brevity, but Locusts and Honey clocks in just over twenty-eight minutes for their debut.1 Described as one song broken into six movements, the centerpiece is its second “Leathern Cord,” whose mountainous waves greet lamenting melodies that inject a burning tension with a patience that makes its twelve-minute runtime satisfying and evocative. Meanwhile, “Beauty and Atrocity” and “Confraternities of the Cord” embrace peaceful melodies alongside sprawling dense atmospherics, while closer “Damnation of Memoriae” serves as a final look back at the dead in its dark ambient emphasis and diminished chord progression. “Traitor to Love” is the closest to a black metal attack, its dense drone giving a convincing caricature of black metal tremolo picking and blastbeats. Murray’s formidable vocals range from sinister shrieks to hellish growls, shining in “Leathern Cord” and “Traitor to Love,” although the guitar remains the focus throughout. Like any good drone record, Locusts and Honey focuses on utter saturation and poignant evocation, although the effective incorporation of gentle melody is noteworthy.

Although the album is billed as a single song, its movements feel a bit uneven. Although bookended by ambient pieces, Locusts and Honey’s use of “Leathern Cord” as the album climax puts every following track in its shadow. Intro “Surfeit of Lampreys” does a fine albeit brief job of building the suspense, but “Confraternities of the Cord” reiterates its motifs in a slightly more melodic fashion in a significantly shorter runtime – begging the question as to why it’s considered distinct from the main event. While “Beauty and Atrocity” is a better and more honed version of the melodic and “Traitor to Love” maintains its own more blackened identity, each track following “Leathern Cord” never quite lives up. Because of the drone tag, like BIG|BRAVE’s A Chaos of Flowers, the guitar tone that Robertson utilizes is absolutely noisy and inaccessible, and its effectiveness depends on the listener, as it regularly drowns out Murray’s otherwise vicious vocal performance.

Locusts and Honey’s wordsy debut blessedly lets the music do the talking for the dead. Surprisingly more positive than its source material suggests, its dual emphasis on mammoth riffs and tense melody inject more memorable moments than much of contemporary drone/funeral doom offerings. While it remains top-heavy with easy highlight “Leathern Cord” right out of the gates, it nonetheless offers complete and absurdly heavy saturation in ways sure to satisfy. While obscenely devastating and as dark as you expect, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave as Little as My Bed incorporates melody and gentleness in a concise package that hints at greatness to come.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hypaethral Records
Website: locustsandhoney.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: May 24th, 2024

#2024 #30 #AmbientNoise #BellWitch #BigBrave #BlackBonedAngel #BlackMetal #Corrupted #DarkAmbient #Darkthrone #DroneMetal #Esoteric #FuneralDoomMetal #Gergesenes #HenrykGórecki #Hooden #HypaethralRecords #LocustsAndHoney #May24 #Nargothrond #Noise #Review #Reviews #Strid #TeachMeToLiveThatIDreadTheGraveAsLittleAsMyBed #UKMetal #UrneBuriall #WilliamBasinski #Winter

The Bell Witch story originated in Adams, Tennessee, in the early 1800s and is one of America’s most well-known and longest-lasting ghost stories. #bellwitch #ghost https://connectparanormal.link/post/752634191470002176/bell-witch-story

#RebeccaVernon recalling #SubRosa playing at the same place ten years ago as one of their best gigs ever was a heartwarming icing on a trve #FuneralDoom party cake last night. #TheKeening were great. #BellWitch were otherworldly. My new two color screenprinted #poster by #LisaArnberger aka #missfelidae is gorgeous.
✨🖤✨