Category: Doom Metal

Heralds of The Great Cosmic Doom, Without Light have seen the final horror beyond time and preach their apocalyptic gospel through grinding guitar and pounding grooves.

The new lineup changes not only giving MOUNTAINEER the ability to play live, but also brought more songwriters into the fold. Throughout 2019 the band collaboratively wrote what was to become Mountaineer’s third full length album, Bloodletting, with Lifeforce Records handling the release once again.

Close the Hatch have been developing their sound for several years, but based on samples of their earlier work this is clearly their best; further in this direction please. It feels like they didn’t quite take their sound seriously enough until they got to Modern Witchcraft. It’s sludge style with a modicum of doom, but the real beauty here are the vocals, which capture the attention and then quickly smother it with sadness.

Gothic doom metal band from the Netherlands.

This record is titled “Lux”, i.e. “light” in Latin, and one of the central ideas behind it is the notion of a Prima Materia, or fundamental root-essence behind everything in the manifest universe. Philosophers, hermeticists, alchemists, occultists, and all manner of different wizards have speculated what that Prima Materia, or “root essence,” is, but the three chief analogies I’ve employed in this record are: All is sound All is mind and, critically, All is Light. With that in mind, we are employing a wealth of Solar imagery with this record, both in the front cover, and lyrically. The cover is essentially an artistic re-imagining of The Sun arcana from Tarot. This ties into the broader solar & light themes at play in the album, but the title, cover, and broader theme is also uniquely personal to me. “Lux” is the etymology of my daughter’s name. So, while this album functions as a form of esoteric prayer on one hand, it also serves as a message to my 2 year old, who, as they say in the cliche, is the light of my life. -GN