ALBUM REVIEW: Atramentus – Stygian

Canadian Funeral Doom Metallers ATRAMENTUS recently unveiled their eponymous debut album of spectral sorrows. I decided it is time to revisit this release for review. The album is out now via 20 Buck Spin.

Haunting bell chimes start out the record with ambience and a heavy foreboding tension. Soon pianos join the accentuate the drawn out sombreness before bellowing guitars and cymbal crashed entwine with a monstrous growl. It does not take much time to realise this release is going to be devastatingly heavy. The crushing melancholy and dread the tinges these eerie soundscapes is palpable with no positivity to be found in the rupturing blows of sonic upheaval, just pure desolate heaviness. Eerie breaks in the music conjure a more sinister atmosphere with organs used upon spectral guitar riffs that cascade so beautifully. Roaring back into truly dragged out bleakness, Atramentus have such a natural storm of barren and inhospitable sounds to offer with a gorgeously transcendent progression.

Monoliths of pure Funeral Doom Metal ecstasy permeate the air with a thick fog of trepidation that is so tangible that those listening to the mesmerising tremors will find them quite inescapable. Spanning across 3 pieces of music, the album is like many of its contemporaries in the harshly drawn out approach to songwriting. Atramentus do not let this hinder the projects ambience nor the need to conquer new sounds. Unlike many Funeral Doom releases, “Stygian” does not rely on repetition too much for the release to grow stagnant, rather preferring the art of nuance in their glimmering depravity. This gives the record a wide scale of value for repeated listens that feel more like a meditation in introspective melancholy than sombreness for the sake of it.

While varied, this is not to say the album ever loses that feeling of tense disquiet. Atramentus do a fine job of walking the lines of progression while staying on the warpath to concoct a masterfully eerie ambience. This freezing tome of barren despair will shake even the most hardened Funeral Doom fans to their core as it is more chilling and unnerving than one could comprehend without witnessing the spectacle. As the album progresses, it becomes even more claustrophobic and rife with disturbing energies that not only fuel the fires of disdainfully sombre music but also make it far harder to get the hooks laid under your skin back out again. Perhaps this is more of a cautionary tale than a review, perhaps some will be frightened by the concept of such a loathsomely dread-inducing slab of music, but those who seek it will be rewarded.

Atramentus’ debut record is one of fine taste and well-crafted songwriting that is delivered with stunning musicianship. With enough heaviness to throw a tectonic plate out of place yet enough introspective discipline to accentuate this into haunting and emotive realms, there is no denying that this is some of the best Funeral Doom Metal to be released in recent years. Fall into the void with Atramentus or be cast asunder. -8/10