ALBUM REVIEW: The Great Hatred – Aphonic Threnody
APHONIC THRENODY are a band that have, since their formation in 2012, only been going from strength to strength. Ever since the release of their debut First Funeral EP, the band has been refining and perfecting their sound, with three subsequent splits and two full-length albums attesting to this band’s musical and compositional talent. Their latest, third album, The Great Hatred, is perhaps their most cohesive and effective record to date, with the bands blend of classic death doom and soaring atmospherics reaching its apex with this album.
Locura is a plodding, slow-burning affair built around steady drums and lighter, melody driven lead guitars, with bellicose vocals providing a jarring contrast to the epic nature of the rest of the song. Spartan, grandiose keyboards add to the muscular sound, and along with clean vocal passages that begin to appear as the song progresses, they manage to pierce the songs thicker sound extremely well. Interrogation, with its clearer guitar tones and haunting ambience, maintains the best doom elements from the previous song, whilst simultaneously leaning into the crisper, more sublime sound, with sharp, sonorous guitars and dominant keyboards lending an angelic feel to an otherwise morose and brooding slab of death doom. The moderately quicker pace that occasionally appears throughout does a great job of adding a sense of urgency and focus to the music, making for an immersive listen.
The Great Hatred takes an experimental turn, with spoken word making an appearance amidst the sludgy gutturals and wider range of guitar tones and playing techniques, from dense chugs to animated lead playing, which captures the slick, melancholic side of death doom without straying into the realms of parody. The airy vocals within the songs second half work incredibly well, and although the keys are scaled back here, it lends a fantastic, MY DYING BRIDE inspired gothic pomp that serves this particular track well.
Drowning sinks further into a classic death doom sound, with monolithic rhythms, notably the thunderous, prominent bass hooks, and soaring guitar flourishes giving everything a gargantuan feel. The vocals slide in between all these components, injecting a meaty undercurrent to this and making for a varied, powerful offering that ends up being one of the stand out tracks on the album. The Rise of the Phoenix amplifies everything that defined the previous track and adds monstrous rhythm guitars and huge keyboard motifs, which make for an altogether more aggressive sound, without having to ratchet up the pace or resort to an impenetrable guitar sound to achieve this.
The ebb and flow between this darker sound and the majestic keyboards works very well for APHONIC THRENODY, with the stark contrast weaving an eclectic tapestry and ultimately cementing this lengthy, monumental piece of music this album’s finest hour. The Fall, featuring what are arguably the absolute best, and most instantly memorable, guitars, is positively saturated with impressive, catchy hooks, from the soaring leads to the glorious piano accompaniments, which give this song the air of a movie soundtrack, making for a lively, adventurous sound that it’s very hard not to love right away, and establishing this song as easily the albums very best offering. The range of vocals on offer, from throaty gutturals to ghostly whispers, mirrors the diversity of the music and adds all the more to this songs engrossing, and enduring, charm.
This album does an excellent job of capturing all of the best elements of classic death doom, without sounding entirely like any other band in the genre. There are a few hints of MY DYING BRIDE and ANATHEMA peppered throughout the music, but on the whole, the band have developed their own style, coupling the headier doom in their sound with more bombastic, gothic flourishes, with the impressive production allowing all of the best components to rise to the top of the mix. The Great Hatred is a great album that manages to balance the light and the dark within it extremely well, making for a creative and imaginative musical roller coaster that is bound to keep most listeners hooked from start to finish.
Rating: 9/10
The Great Hatred is out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.
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