Style: doom metal, progressive metal, progressive death metal, dissonant death metal, avant-garde black metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Tomb Mold, The Ruins of Beverast, Mournful Congregation, Ahab
Country: Norway
Release date: 25 April 2025
In the beginning was the Doom, and the Doom was with Metal, and the Doom was Metal. You all know the story: fifty-five years ago, metal was brought into existence in Birmingham by Black Sabbath. Taking psychedelic blues to previously unknown levels of distorted heaviness, the Brits’ style revolutionized rock and became the archetype of doom metal to come—slow, heavy, evil. And in the depths doom has stayed for half a century, content to drag down the stray thrash or death metal fan who seeks something even more punishing. Doom is the Charbydis of metal, and once you’ve been sucked into her grasp, escaping the sonic mass is near impossible.
Felgrave, a one man Norwegian death/doom band, has returned after a long five years with his newest album Otherlike Darknesses, a hulking album of three beastly tracks—two eighteen-minuters and a twelver. I was ready to be painstakingly slowly crushed by the force of the tracks, have them extinguish any sense of hope or purpose like Spiine did last month. However, while at its core a doom metal record, Otherlike Darknesses claws its way upwards from the abyss and towards the stars, fighting against its own colossal weight all the way. “Winds Batter My Keep” starts by basking in grimy vulgarity like generations of doom bands have before, the riffs oozing forward like pitch. A few minutes later, the dirging doom pace speeds up to a death/doom clip, and Felgrave introduces the predominant riff style for the album: dissonant, entangled guitar lines. Their contorted bickering is a hideous aural spectacle but gripping, nonetheless. Alas, once you’ve accepted your fate of an aural beatdown, from within the distortion, an atmospheric synth creates room in the soundscape for M.L Jupe’s dramatic, heartfelt clean vocals to break through the murk. They’re a recurrent guide through Otherlike Darknesses, a beacon to follow once you get lost in the depths—which you will.
Moreover, while the guitar parts are horrifically dissonant at times—swaths of “Winds Batter My Keep” and “Pale Flowers Under an Empty Sky” get close to the style of playing my Subway peers refer to as “car alarm metal”—they coalesce into melodic leads at others. Rewarding, indeed. The guitars climb ever upwards in complicated, twisting scales not unlike Thantifaxath or SkyThala, with rich tones reminiscent of funeral doom icons Mournful Congregation. When the maelstromic blackened trems break out, the riffs are transformed in a moment to dreamlike abstractions. The dynamic drumming courtesy of Robin Stone provides a dramatic levity to the sound, as well, liberating the death/doom from itself.
The songwriting, too, is dreamlike—unpredictably stream of consciousness. There are rare reprisals, like the middle section and ominous ending of “Winds Batter My Keep,” but otherwise Otherlike Darknesses is wonderfully amorphous, the songwriting always imaginative and natural. Fans of face-scrunching riffs and cerebral dreaminess alike will be satisfied. Each track is a full saga, spanning the gamut from Warforged nightmarishness to Dessiderium-esque serenity.
Otherlike Darknesses’ desperate climb into the heavens would carry significantly less impact were it not for Brendan Sloan’s (Convulsing, Altars) magic dissodeath fingers working the production. The bass is as equally important to Otherlike Darknesses as the wicked guitars, its vibrant, full-bodied tone another speck of brightness when the metal is at its heaviest—but the bass is also the heavy grounding when the clean vocals hog the foreground. The hazy atmosphere from the synths in “Winds Batter My Keep,” the Morningrise and Orchid inspired bits in “Pale Flowers Under an Empty Sky,” the spacious, all-enveloping chords of “Otherlike Darknesses,” the spine-crushingly heavy riffs everywhere… there is no detail in Otherlike Darknesses which doesn’t sound natural, beautiful, yet twisted.
This is the most ambitious album I’ve heard from a one-man project since, well, Keys to the Palace by Dessiderium earlier this year, but it’s damn ambitious, and M. L. Jupe nails the takeoff and landing. I’ve never heard a doom record quite like this, lifting me from Tartarus to the heavens and back down. Maintaining sharp focus through such gargantuan, meandering tracks requires the mastery of harmony and dissonance that Jupe possesses. Breaking free from the chains of its genre to land in another plane of existence, Otherlike Darknesses is surreal doom metal far removed from metal’s roots but at the same time tethered to them.
Recommended tracks: Winds Batter My Keep
You may also like: Worm, Panegyrist, Chthe’Ilist, Dream Unending, Qrixkuor, Warforged, Dessiderium
Final verdict: 8/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Felgrave is:
Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards and programming by M. L. Jupe
Drums by Robin Stone (Evilyn, Norse)
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