ALBUM REVIEW: The Weight Of Eternity – Angmodnes

Extreme music is a spectrum. On one end, you have the fast, brash and abrasive works of grindcore bands where you’re lucky to get a track that lasts 60 seconds. On the other end of the spectrum, so far from that point that it is over the curvature of whatever planet we’re basing this on, sits funeral doom, a genre that consists of single tracks so long that you could listen to an entire grindcore album in the same amount of time. 

ANGMODNES very much sit in that latter ball park; The Weight Of Eternity is a three track lamentation of modern life from multi-instrumentalist Y.S. and drummer M.V. and has been in the works since 2013. Having started out as draft content for Dutch doom merchants APOTOLESMA, the direction of The Weight Of Eternity soon became too far removed from APOTOLESMA‘s collective vision and thus became the debut record for ANGMODNES instead. So far, so convoluted.

Alas, the three tracks themselves are a far more straightforward affair. Dark, brooding and desperate, the album tells the story of one who is damned to live forevermore, after everyone and everything else has ceased to be. This post-apocalyptic vision is stunningly fleshed out and there’s an undeniable cinematic quality to the album. In fact, ANGMODNES‘ ability to paint a picture through such a lurching, loathsome medium is phenomenal. Dense, dark brushstrokes are slapped across the canvas right away in the opening of the title track; guitars and bass rumbling out into the aether as if trying to set in motion the destruction of man. Over and over, the background is slathered up with malicious intent, the roared vocals providing a second broad brush with which to apply the pitch blacks and deepest blues, ensuring nothing else can be seen. It’s not until the gentle, sorrowful piano of the final minute where sparkling, shimmering cracks of gold burst through, leaving this canvas looking like bolts of lightning streaming through the bleakest night sky.

Hollow Earth is a song about a world that has lost its splendour, invoking a spiritual alienation for our central character. Opening with mournful strings, we are soon plunged straight back into the glacial despair that permeates this record. Y.S.‘ hellacious vocals are paired with ethereal, mysterious cleans, elevating the track to another level. The elegance is taken one step further on Under Darkened Vaults which opens with choral vocalisations before once again swan diving into the mire, rattling through uncomfortably slow passages, the heaviness of which is uncounted only by the occasional clean wails and a deluge of frenetic drums and chords.

While these three tracks are delivered with stunning precision and emotion, there is something very similar between all three. They each take the same journey throughout each song and rely on repeated tricks to bookend the songs with delicate and gentle instrumentation at odds with the genre. It makes for a spellbinding structure that sucks you in, but on a deeper level, you may be left wanting a bit more difference track by track.

On the whole though The Weight Of Eternity and ANGMODNES have managed to meld crushing heft and beautiful introspection seamlessly, creating a desolate gut-punch of a record. Desperate desolation never sounded so inviting.

Rating: 7/10

The Weight Of Eternity is set for release on September 30th via Black Lion Records.

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