Ancient Ceremony - P.uritan's B.lasphemy C.all (2004)

German melodic black metal that also takes liberally from gothic, and death metal. For me, everything this band has done lands in the good-to-pretty-great range, with the exception of P.uritan's B.lasphemy C.all, which completely blows the rest of their discography out of the water. Maybe it's the new drummer, who gives them a much-needed ass lift; maybe it's the guitars, which are way gnarlier than before; maybe it's the beefier yet raw-er production. Who knows. Maybe it's the weirdly emotional-hardcore-sounding vocals. Whatever it is, this is a perfect example of that things bands do where they all of a sudden perfect their sound on their last release before splitting up. Strangely, the last track on here is actually a remaster of a track from their debut EP, suggesting that they always had this in them.

Track listing:

1. Te Deum

2. P.uritan's B.lasphemy C.all

3. Raped Paradise

4. The Black Flame

5. Diabolos Temptation

6. God and Idol

Let us kill our enemies

Vengeance is yours and mine

Drunken from this triumph

Their blood it tastes like wine

More along these lines:

Graveworm - As the Angels Reach the Beauty (1999)

Siebenbürgen - Delictum (2000)

Ophthalamia - A Journey in Darkness (1994)

Related:

Abruptum - Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectère Me (1993)

Abruptum - Vi Sonus Veris Nigrae Malitiaes (1997)

Swedish melodic blackened doom featuring the guitar stylings of the late, great It. Riffs right out of the Sabbath/Candlemass playbook, raspy black metal vocals, and some goth-y keyboards here and there for atmosphere. Get it, you fools!

Track listing:

1. A Cry from the Halls of Blood / Empire of Lost Dreams

2. Enter the Darkest Thoughts of the Chosen / Agony's Silent Paradise

3. Journey in Darkness / Entering the Forest

4. Shores of Kaa-Tu-Nu / The Eternal Walk, Part II

5. A Lonely Soul / Hymn to a Dream

6. Little Child of Light / Degradation of Holyness

7. Castle of No Repair / Lies from a Blackened Heart

8. This Is the Pain Called Sorrow / To the Memory of Me

9. I Summon Thee, Oh Father / Death Embrace Me

My blackened teeth chew at the air we breathe

If you like this, check out:

Shadowseeds - Dream of Lilith (1995)

Necromass - Abyss Calls Life (1996)

Wormwood - Starvation (2006)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Wormwood - Requiescat (2000)

Someone just requested that I re-up the link for Requiescat, and it made me want to revisit Wormwood's swan-song: Starvation. Here, they went more atmospheric, leaning into an epic, gothic horror-fueled sound that harkens both to Souls at Zero-era Neurosis and early death/doom bands like Paradise Lost and Anathema, while keeping that crusty base. The last time my old band Wake Up On Fire played with them, we had partied afterwards, and I woke up surrounded by my passed-out bandmates in their percussionist/vocalist's living room, where he had set up a digital scrolling marquee making fun of our guitarist for puking. RIP this band.

Track listing:

1. Passages of Lesser Light

2. Release from Expectation

3. Finite

4. As You Bind, So Are You Bound

5. The Towering Outdoors

6. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

7. No True Altruism

8. Starvation

9. Gluttony

A bridge between sun and form

More from Seattle:

Teen Cthulhu - Ride the Blade (2003)

Wilt - Wilt (2017)

The Gathering - How to Measure a Planet? (1998)

[I'm out of the US for the next week, won't be posting or responding to anything 'til I get back. In the meantime, here's another all-time favorite of mine.]

I've started and erased five different versions of this writeup. The first one was about first hearing The Gathering on a Century Media sampler that also introduced me to Emperor, Eyehategod, Trouble, Samael, and Moonspell; the second was about being temporarily immobilized while listening to How to Measure a Planet? as a severely stoned 17-year-old. Next I tried a different listening story, from a few years ago, when I listened to it while sitting on a log looking out onto Loch Raven reservoir, trying to feel my way through one of the bleakest points of my adult life. Then I tried to incorporate that story into a wider one about how I always feel drawn to How to Measure a Planet? during hard times. Finally, I talked about how The Gathering are clearly a big deal, but I don't know anyone IRL who gives a shit about them, and how I'm not sure if that means that they're big in Europe/elsewhere and not America or if I'm just hanging out with the wrong Americans. And while none of these attempts panned out, the fact that I actually took the time to write/rewrite/delete them -- as opposed to just shitting out a quick description or a tossed-off joke like I normally do -- speaks to how much I fucking love this album.

Track listing:

Disc One
1. Frail (You Might as Well Be Me)
2. Great Ocean Road
3. Rescue Me
4. My Electricity
5. Liberty Bell
6. Red Is a Slow Colour
7. The Big Sleep
8. Marooned
9. Travel
Disc Two
1. South American Ghost Ride
2. Illuminating
3. Locked Away
4. Probably Built in the Fifties
5. How to Measure a Planet?

All I want is to be where you are

Nothing else really sounds like this, but you could also listen to:

Forest of Shadows - Six Waves of Woe (2008)

Sylvaine - Wistful (2016)

David Galas - The Happiest Days of My Life (2009)

Related:

Lycia - The Burning Circle and Then Dust (1995)

David Galas - The Cataclysm (2006)

By request, here's more from David Galas; specifically, his second and possibly best record, The Happiest Days of My Life. He leans hard into the doom influences that colored his first record, then midway through, acoustic guitar becomes central, and the underlying mid-era Swans influences come to the fore.

Track listing:

1. 1970

2. Glory

3. Last Days of the War / Sect IV

4. Arizona

5. Dead Days / Sect V

6. The Happiest Days of My Life

7. Monsoons Over South Mountain

8. The Significance of Failure

9. Crossroads

10. When the Thread Breaks

11. The Happiest Days of My Life 2 / Sect VI

12. The Happiest Days of My Life 3 / Sect VII

13. Everyone Eventually Dies

I told the men that came to hang me

I am the one that they should kill

Fans would also like:

Skin - Shame, Humility, Revenge (1988)

Diabolique - Wedding the Grotesque (1994)

Lake of Tears - Forever Autumn (1999)

Melodic, rock-leaning gothic metal from Swedish institution Lake of Tears. Forever Autumn still has one foot planted in the band's epic doom origins, but it's swept up in a more accessible whirl of ethereal keyboards, neofolk-y acoustic guitars, harmonizing violins, and mid-paced autumnal melancholy. Honestly, it's really melodramatic, and the slightly yarl-y, crooning vocals are a bit reminiscent of James Hetfield, which effectively put me off this record initially, but after a few listens I got really into it, and now it's one of my absolute favorite gothic metal records. (Also, get the new album, it's really good.)

Track listing:

1. So Fell Autumn Rain

2. Hold On Tight

3. Forever Autumn

4. Pagan Wish

5. Otherwheres

6. The Homecoming

7. Come Night I Reign

8. Demon You / Lily Anne

9. To Blossom Blue

The only way goes down

If you like this, try:

Diabolique - Wedding the Grotesque (1997)

Funeral - From These Wounds (2006)

Darzamat - In the Opium of Black Veil (1999)

Polish symphonic black/gothic metal. An abundance of melodramatic clean vocals and string arrangements makes for a significant cheese factor, but I still listen to Cradle of Filth so my tolerance for that kinda thing is obviously pretty high. Please don't ask me to defend the album cover, though, because I cannot.

Track listing:
1. Beyond the World
2. In the Opium of the Black Veil
3. From the Earth to the Stars
4. Ancient Philosophy
5. Secret Garden (Mystic Version)

I look back to embrace you and I see
Icy blackness, deadly nothing

Similar listening:

Siebenbürgen -
Loreia (1997)

Graveworm -
As the Angels Reach the Beauty (1999)

David Galas - The Cataclysm (2006)

Related:
Lycia - The Burning Circle and Then Dust (1995)

Sprawling first solo album from David Galas, who was a member of Lycia for a few years, including during the recording of my favorite record of theirs (see above.) The Cataclysm has a similarly enveloping, droning misery, but it's sonically heavier and adds a twist of gothic Americana, plus some metal growls.

Track listing:
1. Asleep in the Field
2. The Harvest
3. American Melancholy
4. Alone We Will Always Be
5. The End Is Always Closer
6. Sect I
7. Capsized
8. September
9. The Fragment
10. Far Away from Nothing
11. Sect II
12. The Cataclysm Pt. 1
13. The Cataclysm Pt. 2
14. The Burial
15. Shimla
16. Reclamation
17. Sect III
18. The Great Ruins of Man
19. Something Fell from the Sky

Watching time die

You might also enjoy:

Skin -
Shame, Humility, Revenge (1988)

Canaan -
Blue Fire (1996)

Funeral - From These Wounds (2006)

Related:
Funeral - Tragedies (1995)
Fallen - A Tragedy's Bitter End (2004)

The other Funeral masterpiece. Sorrowful baritone vocals over crushing riffs, majestic keyboards, and generally melodic but utterly desolated sounds that are equally informed by funeral doom and gothic death. From These Wounds was written in the aftermath of the suicide of founding guitarist/vocalist Einar Andre Fredriksen (who some of you might recognize from his appearance on this album cover.) Then, heartbreakingly, one of their guitarists, Christian Loos, committed suicide just before the album's release. Needless to say, the specter of loss and mortality hangs over this record's every moment, and you can definitely hear it.

Track listing:
1. This Barren Skin
2. From These Wounds
3. The Architecture of Loss
4. Red Moon
5. Vagrant Moon
6. Pendulum
7. Saturn

Here I lie
Waiting to die
No cigarettes
No drinks after eight
Here I lie
Medication cut down
To preserve my breath
To postpone my death

Also listen to:

Diabolique -
Wedding the Grotesque (1997)

Omit -
Repose (2011)

Forest Stream - Tears of Mortal Solitude (2003)

Russian blackened gothic doom. Almost every moment of Tears of Mortal Solitude is drenched in keyboards, making for a lushly melodic, heavily adorned sound. Jesus, what an eyesore of a cover, though.

Track listing:
1. Autumn Elegy
2. Legend
3. Last Season Purity
4. Snowfall
5. Mel Kor
6. Whole
7. Black Swans
8. Winter Solstice
9. Steps of Mankind

Leave me
I've chosen

If you like this, try:

Cryptal Darkness -
They Whispered You Had Risen (1999)

Fallen -
A Tragedy's Bitter End (2004)

Wormwood - Requiescat (2000)

Sludge-y gothic crust. Funereal organ/synth, two basses, two percussionists, hella vocalists, and no guitars. Wormwood and my old band Wake Up on Fire played a bunch of shows together in various US cities throughout the mid-2000s, and given the many things we had in common -- multiple drummers, too many vocalists, generally being a nightmarish ordeal for any given sound-person, plus a fair amount of dreadlocks -- ended up being pretty good band-homies. Feels like a goddamn lifetime ago.

Track listing:
1. Screwtape
2. Resurrect
3. Nothing
4. Descendant
5. The Endless Search for Food
6. Requiescat
7. Circus
8. Seven
9. Out Cold
10. Soundtrack

A passing sense of intuition doubted for the dark
For the worst and for the grey
A passing memory: secure, serene, sublime

You might also like:

Damad -
Burning Cold (2000)

Moonshine -
Moonshine (2005)

Sylvaine - Wistful (2016)

A gorgeous, shimmering hybrid of ethereal dream pop/shoegaze, black metal, and post-metal from Norwegian artist Kathrine Shepard. Now that I think about it, there are traces of Mandylion-era The Gathering in there, too. Also, is it just me or does the first track sound like that really sad song that Pippin sings in Return of the King while people get brutally slaughtered?

Track listing:
1. Delusions
2. Earthbound
3. A Ghost Trapped in Limbo
4. Saudade
5. In the Wake of Moments Passed By
6. Like a Moth to a Flame
7. Wistful

All shall fade

Similar vibes:

Felix Axemo -
Den Lycklige (2016)

Marunata -
Réminiscence (2017)

Anathema - The Silent Enigma (1995)

Welp, it's my 200th doom metal-related post. To mark the occasion, I thought I'd post an album that I've been known to refer to as the best doom metal record of all time, with the three caveats: 1) There are plenty of other contenders, 2) It took years to grow on me, and 3) Pretty much no one agrees with me. As far as I'm concerned, though, with this record, Anathema attained a level of atmosphere and epic, monumental sorrow that few bands before or since have matched. At the very least, it's their best record -- unless you prefer their later stuff, in which case, we're just not gonna see eye-to-eye on a whole lot.

The Silent Enigma was Anathema's final full-on doom record before they went prog, and their first with founding guitarist Vincent Cavanagh as lead vocalist. For his part, Cavanagh fully commits to the wrenching, if melodramatic heartache, as he shouts, moans, whispers, and growls in equal measure. (Pretty sure it's his unorthodox approach that turns some people off.) Meanwhile, the guitar interplay is second to none. It often feels as though there's a massive cloud of clean and distorted guitars hanging over everything, but a close listen will reveal a level of thoughtfulness in composition rarely heard, in metal or elsewhere.

Track listing:
1. Restless Oblivion
2. Shroud of Frost
3. ... Alone
4. Sunset of Age
5. Nocturnal Emission
6. Cerulean Twilight
7. The Silent Enigma
8. A Dying Wish
9. Black Orchid

The soul has seen through eyes of heaven
The imperium of earth
Nothing left to perceive

Also listen to:

Mourning Beloveth -
The Sullen Sulcus (2003)

On Thorns I Lay -
Orama (2003)

Monumentum - In Absentia Christi (1995)

Italian atmospheric gothic doom with strong psychedelic tendencies. A texturally lush, enveloping combination of sounds and styles that subtly shift and evolve with each song, thereby complimenting the record's narrative, cinematic feel. Plus, they cover/reinterpret Visage.

Track listing:
1. Battesimo: Nero Opaco
2. A Thousand Breathing Crosses
3. Consuming Jerusalem
4. Fade to Grey [Visage cover]
5. On Perspective of Spiritual Catharsis
6. Σελυνης αγγελος
7. From These Wounds
8. Terra Mater Orfanorum
9. Nephtali
10. La Noia

I saw Him drowning in my excrements
In the dim light of a no-consolation oracle

You'd also be into:

Canaan -
Blue Fire (1996)

On Thorns I Lay -
Orama (2003)

Diabolique - Wedding the Grotesque (1997)

Swedish gothic metal. Wedding the Grotesque is definitely on the heavier, less melodic, more doom-oriented side of gothic metal, but the miserable-sounding baritone vocals and plenty of dramatic keyboard/organ make it potentially appealing to those whose enjoyment of the subgenre begins and ends with Type O Negative.

Track listing:
1. Dark Man
2. Shaven Angel Forms
3. Blood of Summer
4. Sacrificial Highway
5. The Unchaste Bittersweet
6. Sorrows Piercing Art
7. The Smiling Black
8. Beggar Whipped in Wine
9. The Diabolique

Broken

You will probably also like:

Beyond Dawn -
Pity Love (1995)

Cryptal Darkness -
They Whispered You Had Risen (1999)

On Thorns I Lay - Orama (2003)

Greek gothic death/doom. Epic and melodic, with beauty-and-the-beast vox and lots of keyboards. Composition-wise, the songs are generally linear, and there's lots of tempo variation throughout, to the point where it should sound scatterbrained, but every change just feels so natural. There's also a certain level of cheesiness, for sure -- kinda goes with the territory -- but Orama truly is an album unto itself.

Track listing:
1. Atlantis I
2. The Song of the Sea
3. Oceans
4. In Heaven's Island
5. Atlantis II
6. Atlantis III
7. If I Could Fly
8. Aura
9. The Blue Dream

Towards a great sadness

You'll probably also like:

Fear of God -
Within the Veil (1991)

Paradigma -
Mare Veris (1995)

Paradigma - Mare Veris (1995)

Old-school Norwegian death/doom. Forlorn, linear epics with deceivingly intricate guitar interplay, thunderous drumming, and beauty-and-the-beast vox, the latter of which lends the songs an ethereal, gothic quality.

Track listing:
1. Come Winter
2. Best Regards
3. Inner Chanting
4. One Away from Paradise
5. Sleep
6. The Shadow
7. Terra Mater
8. Journey's End
9. When the Storm Comes Down

Conjure the fires from deepest waters

More like this:

Paramæcium -
Exhumed of the Earth (1994)

Cryptal Darkness -
They Whispered You Had Risen (1999)

Mindrot - Dawning (1995)

US atmospheric doom/death metal. Mournful, keyboard- and clean guitar-fueled drama, and ugly, heavy annihilation. In a bizarre twist, their drummer left the band following their next record to join ska band/90s one-hit wonders Save Ferris.

Track listing:
1. Dawning
2. Anguish
3. Burden
4. Withersoul
5. Forlorn
6. Internal Isolation
7. Across Vast Oceans

"Do you really lead a good life?"
"No."

You'll also like:

Beyond Dawn -
Pity Love (1995)

Saturnus -
Paradise Belongs to You (1996)

The Project Hate MCMXCIX - Armageddon March Eternal: Symphonies of Slit Wrists (2005)

Dense, dramatic, electro-industrial- and goth-tinged symphonic death metal, complete with beauty and the beast vox. It's for sure bombastic, and not without elements of cheese, but sheer brutality, creativity, and ambition -- only one song fails to surpass the seven-minute mark -- keep Armageddon March Eternal consistently awe-inspiring. Someone requested this like a year ago, so... here it is, I guess.

Track listing:
1. At the Entrance to Hell's Unholy Fire
2. The Bleeding Eyes of a Breeding Whore
3. I See Nothing But Flesh
4. Resurrected for Massive Torture
5. We Couldn't Be Further from the Truce
6. Godslaughtering Murder Machine
7. Symphony of the Deceived
8. Loveless, Godless, Flawless

The essence of massacre

You might also enjoy:

Graveworm - As the Angels
Reach the Beauty (1999)

The Monolith Deathcult -
Trivmvirate (2008)

Dead Blue Sky - Symptoms of an Unwanted Emotion (2001)

Only LP from Dead Blue Sky, two members of whom ended up in Mouth of the Architect. Elements of melodic death and black metal melded together in melodramatic, goth-tinged majesty that 18-year-old-me would have obsessed over if I'd ever got my hands on their CD. I mean, look at those emo-ass song titles! "Holding Yesterday for Ransom"? "My Sadness Has No Seasons"? And, as the DL link will show, the lyrics are no better. Would've made for the perfect soundtrack to all of my imagined woes.

Track listing:
1. Beneath the Autumn Sun
2. Essence of Creation
3. To Live in Dreams
4. When Time Was Time and Life Was Breath
5. Holding Yesterday for Ransom
6. My Sadness Has No Seasons
7. Ghost in the Melody
8. A Reminder of These Heartless Days
9. Ascension of Beauty
10. Symptoms of an Unwanted Emotion

I leave this secret with you
Think of it what you will
I've never felt so empty
This place has drained me
This place I could never hate more