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 34-2024: Vendel – Out in the Fields
Sometimes, applying a certain genre tag to a band doesn’t really do its sound any justice. Going by stylistic characteristics and influences alone, Vendel can be placed firmly within epic heavy/doom metal territory. And yet, they sound nothing like the Manilla Road, Manowar and Solitude Aeturnus wannabes that scene is…
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Album of the Week 30-2024: Scald – Ancient Doom Metal
In the years after its 1997 release, Scald’s debut album ‘Will of Gods Is a Great Power’ grew into a small sensation in the epic doom metal community, though to these ears, it has always sounded like ‘Twilight of the Gods’ era Bathory with a much better singer rather than…
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Album of the Week 27-2024: Stygian Crown – Funeral for a King
In a genre with such clearly defined characteristics as epic doom metal, it can be difficult to stand out. Usually, it would require above average songwriting and an exceptional singer to do so. Stygian Crown has both, but they also have a stylistic twist that makes them quite distinctive. Their…
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Album of the Week 19-2024: My Dying Bride – A Mortal Binding
After two decades of injecting various degrees of death metal and gothic metal into their sound, My Dying Bride has pretty much been a doom metal band on their last couple of albums. Sure, the atmosphere on ‘A Mortal Binding’ can still be somewhat gothic in nature – though nowhere…
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Album of the Week 15-2024: Dool – The Shape of Fluidity
On the surface, Dool seems to operate in similar territory as most of the dark rock bands that have been popping up slowly but steadily in recent years. Not unlike the gothic rock acts that inspired those bands, however, most of them manage to release one captivating album, after which…
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Album of the Week 36-2023: Ningen Isu – Shikisokuzekū
2021’s ‘Kuraku’ was as close to a median Ningen Isu album as we ever got. Solid, but unspectacular. Fortunately, the power trio from Aomori has a way of following lesser albums up with something amazing. The lackluster ‘Burai Hōjō’ was followed by the crusing masterpiece ‘Kaidan Soshite Shi to Eros‘,…
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Album of the Week 46-2022: Candlemass – Sweet Evil Sun
The days when Candlemass released surprising late-career highlights – let’s say ‘King Of The Grey Islands’ – are unfortunately over. However, since reuniting with Johan Längquist, who sang on the band’s highly influential debut album ‘Epicus Doomicus Metallicus’, Candlemass has gone a long way in washing away the unpleasant taste…
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Album of the Week 43-2021: Primordial – To The Nameless Dead
When metal bands choose to season their music with Celtic folk elements, it often turns out obnoxiously upbeat and peppered with violins and whistles. Primordial has been taking elements from the traditional music of their native Ireland for well over three decades now, but the results are far more melancholic.…
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Album of the Week 31-2021: Ningen Isu – Kuraku
The harshest thing I can say about ‘Kuraku’, the twenty-second album by Japanese power trio Ningen Isu, is that it is another Ningen Isu album. It does not quite set the world on fire like its predecessor ‘Shin Seinen’ did, but it simply features guitarist Shinji Wajima, bassist Kenichi Suzuki…
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