Doomas - R’lyeh (2023)
by Flork
The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh...was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults. — H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)
Somehow, Doomas gets it right. An album based on H.P. Lovecraft’s sunken corpse city of R’lyeh, a place so desolate and desperate, only a doom metal group could describe it properly in sound. And just for informational background, if you haven’t read the story „The Call of Cthulhu“ (1928), the city is situated on an island as far away from any landmass as possible. R’Lyeh is the home to a coastline of mud, slime, and large masonry eminating terror and death, hardly a holiday destination one would find at a Satur office or Bubo.
The album opens with Cult Yog-Sothoth, a long yet intriguing introduction to the darkness of Doomas’s world of melodic and haunting sounds. It is an amazing track that provides an intense sense of terror, very much Lovecraftian in its madness and cosmic horror, yet somehow polished and mature in its skillful instrumentation and vocals. This is doom metal at its finest, showing off the heavy and slow side of the guitars, as well as a background of haunting choir vocals. I love this track and move on to La Kingul, which opens on a faster note with speed drumming and guitars. But the tempo slows down as Abyss begins. This track is also a standout, and somehow creates a positive side, or at least a glimpse of hope around the two-minute mark.
One of the highlights of this album is the ominous sounds from the lead vocalist, who doesn’t per se scream or grunt, but in fact sings many of the tracks in low tones of despair and dread, perhaps Cthulhu himself. If you listen to the album in its entirety, you will catch moments of goblin screams and heavy roars, tracks like Portal and Hounds of Tindalos also incorporate such examples. The rest of the tracks on the album, much like the ones previously mentioned, are unique in their own way, with tracks like A and Ω, which is very structured in terms of its composition.
The album ends on a very somber note, with epic sounding Consumed by the ocean: Father! This is the longest track on R’lyeh and features its most chaotic and intense instrumentation. Throughout R’lyeh, Doomas display a mastery of atmosphere and tone, but they shine particularly in the final track. It’s a dark and unsettling journey to the deepest and loneliest reaches of the planet, and so any fan of Lovecraftian horror would appreciate this. R’lyeh is a definite must-listen to for any fan of death, doom, and black metal.
No comments:
Post a Comment