ALBUM REVIEW: Apocalyptic Doom – God Disease
Glacial tempos. Guitars tuned to the bowels of hell. Lyrics full of despondency, anguish and dread. Guttural vocals that rumble up from the depths of mountains stormy and forests thick. A dense, looming presence that oppresses and crushes from all sides. None of those are good names for an album though, so GOD DISEASE opted instead for the two words that encapsulate it all: Apocalyptic Doom.
There will be no prizes for guessing which genre the Finnish trio deals in. Their second full-length outing of such a gloomy disposition (following 2019’s debut album Drifting Towards Inevitable Death), they’ve honed their craft over the past decade, shifting from death metal origins to their current death-doom craft. All of that has been dispensed into conjuring images of desolate wastelands devoid of hope and sustainable life. From Ilkka Laaksonen’s demonic roars and Mika Elola’s sparsely-crashed-but-never-wasted drums, to the guitars of session members Are Kangus and Samantha Schuldiner which are laced with discordance and the bass of Henry Randström that rattles so long and low it’s as if the strings are off the body entirely, GOD DISEASE’s sound is punishing at every level.
The likes of Built By Dead Hands makes clear the band’s intentions to leave listeners downtrodden and despairing right out the gates. A song about “longing, regret, and bitter disappointment”, it has the potential on paper to feel mopey and dull. But by weaponising a classic doom riff and making it thick with malice, the end result is nothing short of devastating.
After a strong start though, the middle seems to sag in comparison. What GOD DISEASE do well, they do really well, but there are times when it feels like we’ve heard this already on Apocalyptic Doom; take Remembrance, for example – the longest track on the record at eight and a half minutes, it bears remarkable similarities to Built By Dead Hands, particularly in its opening. The climax placed at the middle of the song is very effective, but you can’t help but feel short changed when the following four-plus minutes never match that intensity, resulting in a bloated entry that gives few compelling reasons to return.
They certainly save the best for last though, with Serenity Abandoned closing the album in unparalleled form. It’s a stirring, swirling listen that is as emotive as it is terrifying and never pauses for breath, before an ending that crushes your skull. While there are other good tracks on Apocalyptic Doom, this stands head and shoulders above the rest and ought to go down as a GOD DISEASE staple right away. We’d even go as far to say that this stands out as essential listening for any fans of ferocious doom metal.
As an album that does exactly what it says on the tin, there are no surprises here, which works both for and against GOD DISEASE on Apocalyptic Doom. Feelings of safety and familiarity juxtapose with – and ultimately dull – the crushing atmospherics and bludgeoning heft of it all. Imagine going to the cinema to watch the latest psychological horror about the end of the world and humanity’s desperation to cling on to everything they hold dear, knowing that soon it will be gone and there’s nothing they can do about it. Now imagine watching that film while reading the plot on IMDb so that you can steel yourself for what’s about to happen. That’s kind of what this feels like.
Rating: 6/10
Apocalyptic Doom is out now via Gruesome Records.
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