ANGMODNES – The Weight of Eternity
Release Date: 30th September 2022
Label: Black Lion Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Funeral Doom, Death Doom.
FFO: Mournful Congregation, Esoteric, Doom:VS.
Review By: Jason James
Coming out of Utrecht in the Netherlands, Angmodnes prepare to release their debut album, The Weight of Eternity.
This is an album that is 9 years in the making. Band members Y.S. and M.V. are both members of a band called Apotelesma. Y.S. presented some new compositions he had been working on to his bandmates, but they were not considered to be the correct for the band. And so the seed that ultimately became Angmodnes was planted. Y.S. (Compositions, guitars, bass, vocals, recording, mixing & mastering) enlisted the help of drummer M.V. (and F.S. on session vocals) and The Weight of Eternity is the fruit of their labours.
When you only have 3 songs on your album, you usually have to make your point pretty swiftly. But when the running time of those tracks equals 36 minutes and 21 seconds, you have time to luxuriate. A melancholic piano with rising strings underneath starts the album on track 1, the title track The Weight of Eternity, before the guitars and drums kick in proper. 36 minutes later, the album closes with more funerial piano stabs, fading into the kind of oblivion that appears to be the theme of this whole project.
Angmodnes bring into existence 3 tales of an entity cursed with seemingly eternal existence, utterly alone and praying for the release of death after anything they have ever cared for has long since atrophied and turned to dust.
It seems like a juxtaposition to say that I enjoyed an album as desolate and anguished as this one, but enjoy it I did. This is a stellar debut from the Dutch metallers and I await further releases with anticipation.
(4 / 5)
