Doom Metal Reviews
Slow, dark, and incredibly heavy. If that’s how you like your metal, the releases covered in my doom metal Album of the Week reviews are very much worth checking out. With the caveat that the doom metal Kevy Metal covers tends to be of the traditional, epic or mildly progressive variety. The occasional detour into something altogether darker and more abstract certainly exists though. My doom metal reviews can be found right here. Overlaps with my heavy metal reviews inevitably exist, especially among traditional doom metal and epic doom metal.
While most of my doom metal reviews are listed here, I did not start properly tagging my reviews until a few years in. Searching by artist or release title using the search bar at the bottom of the page might bring up some reviews you cannot (yet) find by browsing this page.
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Album of the Week 15-2020: Dool – Summerland
Three years ago, debut album ‘Here Now, There Then’ by the Rotterdam-based band Dool took me completely by surprise. While it’s not uncommon for dark rock bands to nail the atmosphere associated with the scene, Dool actually has the songwriting chops and the exquisitely arranged guitar tapestries to completely ditch…
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Album of the Week 11-2020: Onmyo-za – Hyakki-Ryoran
Only a year had passed between the releases of Onmyo-za’s debut album ‘Kikoku Tensho’ and sophomore record ‘Hyakki-Ryoran’, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the massive improvement the latter is over the former. Where the debut had promising, but largely underdeveloped material, ‘Hyakki-Ryoran’ features some of the best…
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Album of the Week 03-2020: Grave Pleasures – Motherblood
While I welcome the increasing influence of early eighties post-punk in rock music, many bands attempting the style try to stick to the genre’s conventions slightly too closely to really make an impact. Grave Pleasures is an exception to the rule and have been so since their inception as Beastmilk.…
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Album of the Week 01-2020: Dark Fortress – Venereal Dawn
When bands rooted in black metal branch out, labelling them can become an issue. There are only so many adjectives one can add to describe Dark Fortress’ darkly progressive music without the result coming off as totally ridiculous. It is a fact, however, that ‘Venereal Dawn’ is quite a bit…
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Album of the Week 52-2019: Killing Joke – Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell
Killing Joke albums come in many forms. Militant like their first two albums, polished like ‘Pandemonium’, catchy like ‘Night Time’… ‘Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell’ is different. With its long, slowly unfolding tracks, it feels like a deliberate attempt to create Killing Joke’s least accessible album to date. Therein…
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Album of the Week 51-2019: The Vision Bleak – The Unknown
Gothic rock’s mournful melodies and doom metal’s crushing heaviness appear to be made for each other, both having an irresistibly ominous theatricality to them. More often than not, however, gothic metal bands go for the goth aesthetic rather than the stylistic properties of the genre. For every ‘Irreligious’, there is…
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Album of the Week 48-2019: Avatarium – The Fire I Long For
For a long time, Avatarium was just another Leif Edling project for me. Avatarium stood out due to the charismatic vocals of Jennie-Ann Smith, but a majority of their material still sounded like Candlemass with female vocals. Smith and her husband, veteran guitarist Marcus Jidell, started contributing to the songwriting…
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Album of the Week 43-2019: Ningen Isu – Ogon No Yoake
‘Ogon No Yoake’ is the album on which Ningen Isu matured. That may be a dirty word for some rock bands, but Ningen Isu finally realizes its full potential here. Their debut EP and first two albums contained plenty of excellent songs, but also showed that the band wasn’t quite…
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Album of the Week 37-2019: Capilla Ardiente – The Siege
Not too long ago, in a review about Capilla Ardiente’s debut album ‘Bravery, Truth And The Endless Darkness’, I voiced the hope that the sophomore album the Chilean doomsters were working on at the time would be as good. ‘The Siege’ is now available and it is good. Very good…
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