Review Summary: In a dark place.
Sometimes all you want to do is remain motionless for the rest of your life. What’s the point in doing things if everything you do turns out bad? No point-it’s easier and better for everyone if you do nothing. Because the thought of things going wrong has buried itself into the deepest pit of the subconscious, you don’t even move, not even readjusting your position or even cracking the slightest smile. The movement of respiration is involuntary, but you barely notice that either because now you can’t find the motivation to even think. You are paralysed, vegetative, motionless; you’re not dead, but this is no life. You just… are.
Occasionally, Depression becomes so overwhelming that you want it to absorb you in its dark embrace rather than attempt to counter it. The comforting thing about this is that you feel at peace knowing you are contained in a setting perfectly reflective of your mood. This setting seems to be the permanent residence that Doom Bringers Loss resides in. In keeping with their doom metal aesthetic, it’s been a long six-year gap between their monstrously depressive debut,
“Despond”, and their latest album
“Horizonless”, which sacrifices none of their refined despondency, and over the course of 2 albums, Loss is rising to be one of funeral doom’s most prominent bands.
Make no mistake, this is a taxing album to listen to.
“Horizonless” stands at 65 minutes long, however, a minute of Loss’s time feels like five times that of the average person’s concept of duration. The battling effect that listening to this album has is like trying to stand with the heaviest object in the world clamped onto your shoulders while an unbeatable force wrenches you back down. Churning out the same strenuous organ melody in “The End Steps Forth”, Loss attempt to build an absorptive atmosphere here- and throughout the album- where the lulling riffs or undulating bass align with gothic spoken word to create a tense, chilling mood similar to My Dying Bride’s
“Turn Loose the Swans”. “All Grows On Tears” also features a dragging pace that seems to break all concepts of time management where the collapsing riffs guide Mike Meacham’s thunderously grim vocals and unhurried drumming through various intensities of looming drone, impending doom and occasional light-hearted flourishes of melody.
Additionally, assisting in making
“Horizonless” sound long and tiring is the sheer grimness of the album. It starts with what the torturous noise and vivid imagery of having cold, rusted nails dragged slowly down your naked spine would look and sound like. Indeed, “The Joy of all Who Sorrow” is as excruciatingly depressing as Loss gets on their sophomore album. Although, during “Banishment” they crush all in their path with agonising vocals, clawing riffs and groaning bass, each extended to a lethargic tempo to establish their hopeless environment. “Moved beyond Murder” is the most haunting track on this album, transporting us into the skin of a terrified victim as they listen to a composed villain breathing impending threats such as “Oh what I wouldn’t give to drag a knife across your throat” as the cold cymbals chime irregularly in the quiet drafts of synth. Atmosphere is the core focus of
“Horizonless”, and Loss succeeds in creating easily the grimmest, disheartened, most distraught album that this year will probably oversee.
Adam Burke’s artwork defines the imagery of this music perfectly. A figure may be casting away the horizon in place of nothingness, however, there is still life and light captured within this album. Despite the odd sequencing of the album, shades of light beam out of the void during “I.O” and “Naught” through eerie swirling melodies and eerie mandolin on the former. It’s in these moments where the album doesn’t feel as tiresome it is, and if
“Horizonless” had more of this differentiation, it’d be an undeniable classic of its genre. Stay still and give yourself to the dark- resistance isn't worth the effort
