Saturnus
Veronika Decides to Die

As a doom metal enthusiast, I thought (with a hint of arrogance, I admit) that I had already heard it all, but when I bought this album a year ago and listened to it, I was stunned: "How did I not notice Saturnus?" I wondered. Therefore, I started doing some research on the internet and realized that I wasn't the only one to make this huge mistake. In this album, this exceptional band delivers a doom that's always heavy, yet loaded to the utmost power with devastating and annihilating melancholy. It wraps around you like a cold late autumn wind, and takes possession of you, marking you, really, for a long time. Since I discovered it, a unique bond has formed with this album, a dependency that only a very few other records have been able to give me. Whether it's due to its solemn atmosphere of fallen realms and dethroned kings, its typically autumnal soul, or because I listened to it during a crucial moment of my life, the fact is that this album has become for me, I repeat, indispensable. And I will try to persuade you to make it yours, so that you, too, may finally agree with me.

In a way, the doom offered by the Finns in this "Veronica Decides To Die" seems suitable for those approaching this music genre for the first time. Although the cadences are stretched to the extreme and the growl vocals are deep and majestic, it is in its melodic architectures that the album wins you over. There's not a single track that underperforms, not one where the guitars don't outline vast ethereal and open spaces (which is a contradiction for doom), not one where a sweet and warm sadness isn't the uncontested queen. Lose yourself in the opener "I Long" and you'll understand what I mean, it's capable of touching hidden and unimaginable strings. At the end of its eleven minutes, you'll feel exhausted but in a way reborn thanks to this masterpiece.
Our guys are obviously also capable of faster and more aggressive rhythms, as in the following "Pretend", where savagery turns into screaming despair, yet it's in the slow parts, perhaps accompanied by the piano, that they strike the listener with all their load of dark romanticism and win them over. "Rain Wash Me", indebted in its hypnotic guitar loop to "The Cry Of Mankind" by My Dying Bride, is a noose around the neck that tightens more and more, it's a bottomless pit that swallows you up more with each verse.

The exceptional masterpiece, however, is "All Alone". I have no words to describe it, I've never had any, it must simply be listened to. The piano, which takes a primary role here, is so loaded with anguished emotions and so damn melancholic that it almost makes you want to cry, and when it's not used, there are acoustic guitars that carry forward the soft and desolate carpet over which the calm and warm voice of Thomas Jensen tells stories of despair and resignation. Here, you truly touch the album's highest emotional peak, and the song is a terrifying crescendo that culminates in the strikes of the electric guitars completing this disconsolate black gem. Everyone must hear this song, search for it, download it, even just this one, it's something indescribable.
The subsequent "Embraced By Darkness" is probably the clearest doom manifesto of the band contained in the album. Listening to it, one notices how eclectic Saturnus are, capable of weaving melodies so heavy yet theoretically accessible even for those who've never heard of doom. The finale is very remarkable, with the leading guitar solo seeming to wrap itself around, disappear, only to reappear more present and heavier than before.
Finally, the last track deserves a mention. "Murky Waters", perhaps the most wicked and aggressive of the lot, with heavy, monolithic guitars and a very heavy and spiteful voice, here screams its blind rage to the world. A beautiful and intense ride that, in fact, closes this masterpiece, worthy, without a doubt, of standing alongside albums by My Dying Bride, Anathema and the like.
A must-have, nothing else to add.