Doom:VS
Aeternum Vale

Since I certainly notice that the admirers of Doom Metal, at least in this context, are few, very few, so few that you can count them "on the fingers of a severed hand," I entrench myself in the even more underground and pestiferous character of the genre, that is "Funeral" and I remain always "content" and fascinated by it.

I don’t do it to spite anyone, heaven forbid (although I bet the poor soul is already crossing his fingers and, instead, someone else has decided to make me swallow a certain orange frisbee), but only because I believe that this "branch" is in some ways very congenial to me. Congenial because, needless to say, it is extremely based on immutable and ashen concepts, nothing to do with the simplicity of certain operetta-like choruses repeated ad nauseam at least three thousand times in barely three minutes.
Of course, sometimes you need those too to give yourself a good shake, but sometimes, music, and specifically speaking of Funeral Doom, must necessarily be intimate and apocalyptic, to make one think, to make one reflect, perhaps even to exorcise latent fears and anxieties or pseudo ones.

Then, in these moments, you can only rely on something that has the same granite hardness and unbearable heaviness of a reinforced concrete monolith, the same infinite thickness of certain memories so dear yet so painful, the same semi-transparent, evanescent and unfinished edges of things that appear for a moment in the brain and then disappear in the blink of an eye.
The memories, the lost loves, those once thought infinite and yet decapitated in a couple of months, the loss of a cherished person to whom we were extremely attached, the frustration of impotence, the despair of being nothing, understood in its most paroxysmal and grotesque form, the moral and physical decay, the indolence of the character, of the soul and of the hidden recesses of mental processes.

All this, and much more, I manage to grasp only in very slow, catacombal, subterranean and annihilating melodies, all or almost all, enclosed in songs that last an average of ten minutes and that, when they end, leave traces of anxiety omens and barely hinted fears.
Contrary to what is believed, playing in slow motion is not at all simple, especially if, like in this album, you have the ambition to embroider poignant and in some ways even minimal phrases around it, always running the lurking risk of falling into boredom and consequently, into oblivion and the shrouds of dust on the shelves.

Well, for Doom:VS this risk is non-existent.

Musical project conceived in 2006 by the histrionic Johan Ericson (and those who know Draconian know perfectly well to whom I refer), who here dedicates himself, besides his passion for the guitar, also to almost all other instruments and production, without neglecting, naturally, the "grunts" delivered in industrial measure and never spared in the grooves of "Aeternum Vale".

Ericson is the creator of a work that stands on certainly high and impactful levels, not giving up on the creation of gothic atmospheres, and this is also thanks to the numerous keyboard parts that complement a truly ancestral, morbid and well-structured "mood". Certainly, we are not at the Olympic levels of other national glories of Doom, but if they are not reached it is only because the album, while representing a good hit of all the worst things that can happen to a man, invests more on the rhythms and synchrony of the parts rather than on the introspective sense of intestinal malaise that animates (or animated) bands much more renowned than this, like Shape of Despair, Skepticism, Morgion and others.
And so, alongside the claustrophobic closed rooms never bathed in light that are always well present in every corner, weeping and redundant guitar chords appear that seem to climb who knows where, or want to sink into who knows what abyss, small piano interludes and electronic reflections placed in the most caustic and cryptic parts of the CD. At certain moments it even seems necessary to recognize the very first Anathema, as in "The Crawling Inserts", or Candlemass in their best form.

Even though this is exquisitely a "Funeral" product and can easily be placed at the center of this genre, therefore necessary and varied attitudes that do not belittle and do not overshadow any emotional and sound impact are not lacking. Just listen, at random, to the beautiful "Empire of the Fallen" set in a gothic frame that would make My Dying Bride envious, and which, incidentally, is one of the most successful tracks of the work, or the terrifying growl, hair-raising, introduced by the cadenced and "wide" notes of a piano on "Oblivion Upon Us".

All the better if then all the songs (mastodontic, always important to remember), have a particular and eclectic flair that cannot but charm, provided you stop to think about them and not just listen to them, and always that, as usual regarding this genre, you are not caught by the "choking pain" and the irresistible desire to go outside to get a breath of fresh air.