Album Review: Witnesses - Doom II (Progressive Doom, 2020)

Hardly any Doom Metal release touches me much these days. It's not that I dislike it. It's simply as if it feels like anything has been said and performed already.

Until one day this release of Witnesses reached me. It opened up my ears back again. How? Besides the traditional doom trademarks like the powerful guitars and the well known compact rhythm package that accompanies the music it has more to offer.

The album tells the story of a cursed plague-bearing ship that finds landfall at one unfortunate village. 

It's a good batch of feelings that shines at the right moments. The music becomes more sensible. Finetuned melodies find their way into the sound giving it a broken touch. It feels like the own sensible emotional world of a human comes in to bring a own color to the picture.

All tracks are total longplayers. You can easily loose yourselves a bit in them.
Happily they are not too long to become boring or make you skip easily.

There's a need for concentration but at the same time it's also headbang-compatible material so there's still enough fun and heavyness inside. Much dedication and detail-work can be heard. Sometimes you can find your own feelings in works of musicians. That's what happened at least to me with this release.

My faves are the opener "On this Black Ocean" for the epic feelings and "Worse with time" for the heavier side.

It's a independent release. Please consider a purchase of this directly through
the band's Bandcamp page. It's available as a download for just one dollar or more.

Keep in touch with Witnesses through Facebook or the growing popular platform Instagram.

Prog Doom band Awake the Sun streams full first album

So the year is winding down quickly. Time to make plans for 2016. What shall happen in the upcoming time? One thing I'll keep doing is looking forward to new releases.

One of these records that I'll keep a eye upon is the one of the Progressive Doom metallers Awake the Sun. The band from Venice, Italy has just announced the release a new album in Europe on February 2016 through Sliptrick records.

(c) by Awake The Sun, used with kind permission

The band is a project created by the founders of the Italian avant-garde metal band Ensoph (active for more than 13 years with 4 albums released and many gigs played around Europe) and members from Alkemic Generator, Cube and Howl of Minerva.

The project blends together dark progressive metal and electronic/ambient influences with the aim to create unique misty melancholic atmospheres and to obtain a personal interpretation of the classic European Dark/Doom metal sounds. In some ways they remind me of a mixture of the heavier musical side of Paradise Lost with the unconventional arrangements of bands like Vanden Plas.

Gloomy and technical riffs, dismal scores, unconventional rhythmic patterns enhanced by a range of melodic vocal arrangements are the trademark of the band.

The debut album of the band is titled The Barren Sleep, 8 tracks of sad emotional landscapes, a journey through broken hopes and inquietudes, heavy and sharp riffs on polish rhythmical structures entwined with bittersweet melodies and haunting feels. Make sure to have a listen to the band's debut record while we wait for the new album to arrive.

Make sure to see the band's web-presence on Facebook or the record company's website to stay up to date about the impending album release.