Angmodnes Spreads the "Rot of the Soul" Through Gloomy Death-Doom (Early Album Stream)
Power and grace seem equally important in crafting melodic death and doom metal, and Angmodnes is not lacking in either capacity. The mysterious Dutch outfit (another offspring of Utrecht's potent scene) is set to deliver their debut album Rot of the Soul, a dose of sorrowful extreme metal that's as poignant in its weighted silences as it is at its heaviest. It's a record that's incredibly personal in some ways, especially lyrically, and derives a lot of its sound from layering clean vocals together, both ethereal and direct. At the same time, even the opening track "Beneath" is in possession of some extremely sinister riffs that had to have been cooked up in a high-wattage laboratory lit solely by tube amps. Anguished power chords and room-filling drums never overpower the diverse vocal approaches or clean instrumentation (including a tagelharpa), and often find themselves further amplified by the latter.
Perhaps best embodied by the closing title track's half-sobbed vocal break, Rot of the Soul is truly sad in a way that's easier to connect to than a lot of higher-concept approaches to the same thing. While not willing to share their names (members go by Y.S., M.V., and F.S.), the band is more than willing to draw listeners into the glum realms that their minds pace, over and over.
Below, we're streaming the entire record below before it releases on Friday.
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The band comments:
Following the debut, Rot of the Soul builds upon the themes put forward there, detailing the gradual descent into a bleak solipsism and black hole depression; meditating endlessly on nihilistic axioms contrary to life, to the point where life becomes an impossibility.
Rot of the Soul releases March 1st via Tragedy Productions.
