ALBUM REVIEW: Death, Where Is Your Sting – Avatarium

Ripping open a genre like you’re bursting through somebody’s chest in Alien isn’t something you do overnight. But gothic-doom supergroup AVATARIUM continue to defy the odds on Death, Where Is Your Sting, picking up where 2019’s The Fire I Long For’s experiments in mixing psychedelic pop and doom rock left off. If The Fire I Long For was a binge-worthy series of bluesy, groovy, psychedelic doom-rock, Death, Where Is Your Sting is a two-act musical, stripping back the doom in favour of 70s soft-rock, art-pop, and gothic folk. Where most doom acts would be ushered off the stage by boos and bottles, AVATARIUM earn a standing ovation for evolving a genre often stuck to its roots.

AVATARIUM have never stuck to the doom-metal playbook. Yet Death, Where Is Your Sting is their biggest departure yet. Psalm For The Living is gothic folk at its finest, guided by a spectre’s honey-soaked vocals over a storm; Nocturne’s cyclical, spiralling guitars position their sound somewhere between Hail To The King-era AVENGED SEVENFOLD and the Americana art-pop of TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS; and Transcendent is the progressive instrumental you never knew you needed them to make. 

But it’s the title track, arguably the album’s standout, which lends AVATARIUM a whole new land to conquer. Finishing what BLACK MOUNTAIN attempted on 2016’s IV, the track traces 70s soft-rock and art-pop through a groovy synthesiser of rolling riffs, landing somewhere between THE GRATEFUL DEAD and a gothic FLEETWOOD MAC. Built like a haunting rumination on survivor’s guilt in post-COVID times, vocalist Jennie-Ann Smith’s show-stealing chorus – “I can hear the roar of thunder / See the lightning split the sky / See the devil in your eye / I can hear the rain of fire / And your raging siren sing / But I can’t feel anything / Oh death, where is your sting?” – lingers in your eardrums long after you’ve left it. 

Every song in this eight-track set stands defiantly on its own, yet coalesces like a flowing stream. Opener A Love Like Ours unfolds like theatre curtains unravelling at the start of a play, gothic strings dancing in the wind with electric and acoustic guitars, building to a vocal crescendo that feels like 60s psychedelia and free jazz washing over you. As Smith offers her hand to “come walk with me, help me understand my dreams”, you can’t help but feel you’re being walked through the rabbithole.

Whereas The Fire I Long For felt like fireworks exploding off into the night, AVATARIUM are a clearer and more comfortable band this time, with every track creating space to shine the spotlight on Smith’s undeniable talent. Her vocal approach takes simple lyrics and shapes them into entire worlds; Stockholm’s instruments flourish around her vocals, like buds blossoming into flowers, whilst Mother Can You Hear Me sees Smith’s vocals wage war with Marcus Jidell’s guitars, creating a rumbling dissonance that sends shivers down your spine as you hear “Mother, break the silence / Hold me through defiance, storms and violence” echo out. Her vocal prowess on this album is further evidence of the band’s shifting responsibilities, with Smith writing all of the lyrics for the first time.

Death, Where Is Your Sting, like The Fire I Long For before it, continues to push AVATARIUM into a world of their own, away from the dreary mountains of doom that birthed them and into a groovy, psychedelic world of 70s soft rock. And who could possibly complain about gothic rock’s answer to FLEETWOOD MAC?

Rating: 9/10

Death, Where Is Your Sting is set for release on October 21st via AFM Records.

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