Asphodelus's second album, Sculpting From Time, is a triumph of atmospheric, Tiamat-esque death-doom metal that captures the essence of the early-‘90s extreme doom music with its jagged riffs, gothic melodies, and profound sense of sorrow. The album blends the primal sounds of UK death-doom, Finnish death metal, and even Greek black metal. It is beautifully crafted and passionately executed, with each element working together to create a sprawling and immersive atmosphere, without a need for perfect takes. This is music that feels earnest and special and made from the heart.

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One single 83-minute-long track. A long, long journey that weighs down on you. An agonizingly colossal undertaking. The road ahead always looks daunting when you just see road and road for miles and miles, and that's just the first part of something. If Mirror Reaper feels monumentally depressing because it illustrates a tragedy, then Future's Shadow feels monumentally depressing because it illustrates the arduous road forward. Even slower and more ambient-/drone-leaning than their past works, steeped in cathedral-sized organs, with crushing riffs, imposing drumming, harrowing growls, and angelic clean vocals floating around the droning synths, this is what the "dawn" part of the promised triptych of Bell Witch albums feels like.

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The duo made of LL, the instrumental part of Desolate Shrine, and MN, the vocal part of Dark Buddha Rising, did more than just combine the sounds of each of the members' bands, offering some bleak and grim doom, often going into funeral doom territories, sometimes into crushing death-doom. It's a very desolate and apocalyptic but nonetheless dramatic landscape that No Dawn For The Caliginous Night portrays, and there's something gripping about how passionate it is about being immensely negative. The textures are dense, the riffs and synths soar, and the vocals end up filling the album with very downtrodden emotion.

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Your Sunset / My Sunrise is the German death-doom group Décembre Noir's fifth full-length release to date and a release that has undoubtedly proven to be up there with the very best in what was a very positive year for death-doom. Your Sunset / My Sunrise is an album of true melancholic beauty, and through exceptional songwriting, captivating melodies, and an outstanding level of musicianship, Décembre Noir offer a glimmer of hope and tranquility for poor wretched listeners who are in need of a serious pick-me-up. This may be an album more suitable for those dark, grim winery months, but even on a glorious summer day, if there are ominous grey clouds looming ahead, this album makes for the perfect soundtrack.

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At the 2020 MSAs, Fires In The Distance made a grand entrance by swiping both Best Doom Metal Album and Best Debut Album with Echoes From Deep November, one of the year’s biggest breakouts. Air Meant For Us not only keeps that momentum going, it ups the ante, offering six long tracks of warm, rich doom metal that accesses all of the genre’s most inviting melodic strategies. Heavy use of piano and synths puts the album in a dreamlike trance as aching guitar leads conjure memories of classic death-doom; a strong vein of melodeath gives the album a heartbeat to close any emotional distance created by its extreme tangents. Echoes From Deep November was quite the sensation; Air Not Meant For Us proves that we are currently beholding one of doom’s future titans on the rise. You can even get the talkie or the subtitled version if you like.

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Marianas Rest's fourth album marks the band's 10th anniversary and plunges listeners into a frozen death-doom expanse, forcefully led by Jaakko Mäntymaa's impassioned vocals. In the midst of Finland's saturated metal scene, Auer offers a blend of melodic doom and death metal with a production akin to the harshness of the Nordic winter, mirroring the relentless bitterness explored in this intense musical journey. Balanced by moments of epic-melodic beauty, the band showcases growled vocals, piercing screams, slow, heavy rhythms, and impactful keyboard sounds, creating a collision of powerful riffs with sombre melancholy. The album's structure fluctuates between relentless force and delicate restraint, culminating in the poignant finale, "Sirens", featuring Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride. While Auer leans more towards brute force than solace, it remains a compelling, albeit demanding, musical narrative. The Finnish sextet's ability to navigate through darkness and deep melancholy without getting lost in excessive self-pity lends qualities to Auer that are often missing in similar works of many of their compatriots, namely credibility and a certain authenticity.

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The recent trajectory towards post-metal of Gaerea’s black metal has spilled over into Oak, the atmospheric death-doom side-project of Gaerea’s Guilherme Henriques. Funeral doom pacing is paired with textures that at different times are spacious and tranquil, or crushing and gloomy, yet nearly all the material in this single-song epic is underpinned by sorrowful melody, save a few snippets of more full-blooded extremity. Post-rock tremolos and textures shape the soundscapes of this strongly evocative and impressively paced odyssey, one that runs the gamut of emotions while exhibiting hints of bands such as Swallow The Sun, Mar De Grises, and A Swarm Of The Sun.

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Ocean Of Grief already took some inspiration from On Thorns I Lay, and when two members actually joined Greece’s elder statesmen of doom for a couple of years between albums, they really studied up: Pale Existence doesn’t set out to copy that beloved institution, whose own new album you’ll find directly below this one, but Ocean Of Grief have picked up some tips on how to grow their own stock, and this is an improvement on what was already a strong debut. Pale Existence obeys the cardinal rules of mournful death-doom: 1) deep gutturals take charge; 2) know how to use your synths; and 3) your guitars should be weeping. The inescapable implications of gothic influences will draw the ear to Saturnus, the wrenching melodic density has Swallow The Sun written all over it, and of course there’s the aforementioned On Thorns I Lay – but Pale Existence demonstrates that Ocean Of Grief are becoming heavyweights of somber doom in their own right.

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With a career now spanning over 30 years, Greek death-doom veterans On Thorns I Lay felt the time was right to release a self-titled album, and they have crafted a record fitting of their name. 2023 saw its fair share of top-quality death-doom releases, but few hit the same powerful melancholic mark as this one. Carrying on from where the previous two efforts, Aegean Sorrow and Threnos, left off, this latest release offers stunning gothic death-doom with a large variety of instrumentation, from breathtaking violin strings to magnificent piano passages, from sweet, melancholic acoustic guitar work to imposingly heavy death-doom slogging. On Thorns I Lay is a tremendous all-round effort and should not be missed by fans of gothic or death doom metal.

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Tideless have chosen the right aesthetic for themselves: Eye Of Water sounds like it is being conducted to you through miles of ocean, blurred by the soft distortion of infinite currents. The album is not without its furious waves of death metal, cold torrents of riffs pulsed out at ramming speed, and when Tideless hone in on the right mark, they can sharpen that aggression into black metal or hammer it out into broadside blasts of doom drudgery, but it’s the mesmerizing seas of tranquility where they really shine: Eye Of Water drifts in and out of endlessly repeating themes, with synths that shimmer sunnily or mourn plangently overhead, blending pure death-doom with aquatic shoegaze and post-rock so seamlessly you’ll lose track of whether you’re supposed to be caressed or eroded. Tideless have captured a unique atmosphere, a sound of fathomless depths slowly rippling to the surface with the weight of an ocean’s worth of water.

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