This stunning debut comes to us via members from across the globe—from England to Spain to Czechia to Brazil. Despite somewhat limited experience between them, the sextet plays like they’ve been jamming together for decades. They bring an eclectic range of styles from their previous and current bands, from black metal to scatological heavy metal to melodic doom to gothic metal, in order to craft a gentle yet brutal piece of gothic doom metal. I would like to give a warm welcome to Opia and their powerful debut album, I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep.

Opia deftly balances the gentle with the crushingly heavy, resulting in a record of beautiful melancholy that would make My Dying Bride and Swallow the Sun proud. They achieve this with a dichotomy of soft arpeggios and heavy riffs, of tender cleans and harsh growls. This dichotomy amplifies the melancholic power of the music, and there’s an undeniable satisfaction when a song suddenly grows loud and brutal following a softer stretch. We hear this on tracks like “Days Gone By,” which opens with some nifty fretwork before exploding into heavier riffs. Opia flexes their true muscle on masterpieces like “Man Proposes, God Disposes” and “Silence,” where Tereza Rohelova’s cleans croon a melancholic melody before delving into such despairing heaviness that it’ll have you aching from the hurt. The similarly astonishing “The Eye” flips the melodic element on its head with a chorus where Rohelova’s growls deliver the beauty over top a soaring keyboard part.

I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep by Opia

As great as the compositions are, the heartfelt performances by all musicians elevate the material. As frontwoman, Rohelova sets the tone with an electrifying performance on the level of My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe. Her cleans take on a haunting quality that adds a touch of the gothic, and while her growls don’t reach the muscular tone of Stainthorpe, they are nonetheless effective in setting a tone of brutality. The dual guitar work from Phoenix Griffiths and Dan Tregenna also dazzle. Their fretwork is so effective and creative, whether it’s the mellower arpeggios or crushing riffs, that there’s never a dull moment or a lull. Marcelo Teixeira, behind the kit, is also solid. He swaps between gentle drum and cymbal taps to pummeling blast beats on a dime. He really goes all out on a climatic moment on the finale, “On Death’s Door Part II,” that’ll leave you breathless. Important to setting up the gothic tone is keyboardist Jorge Afonso Rodriguez, who adds melodic depth as well as atmosphere. There’s a depth to the songwriting that opens up rewarding new avenues every time I give the record another spin.

Having been released in late April, I missed out on the opportunity to review I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep by just a few weeks. But when I first heard it, I knew it was special enough to save for a TYMHM. A debut this powerful should not be missed, and having spent this extra time with it late in the year, I believe I made a mistake by not including it in my end of year list. This is a promising start for a group who, I hope, continues to craft songs together for a long time to come.

Songs to Check Out: ”Man Proposes, God Disposes,” “The Fade,” “The Eye,” “Silence

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Shivered – Chains Review

By Lavender Larcenist

Not much is more metal than having to put your life on the line to play the music you love. For Iranians, that is an everyday reality, forced to play underground or flee their home country for fear of persecution. Metal is considered blasphemous (hell yeah) in Iran, and the most famous example of a band suffering under these draconian laws is Confess. I imagine Mohammad Maki, the one-man band that is Shivered, has to struggle with these same challenges. A concept album focused on the end of humanity through collective mass suicide probably isn’t making anyone happy who takes umbrage with metal’s dark themes and brutal nature. But that is exactly what Maki has served up with a heaping helping of gothic doom, a little bit of death, and a whole lot of atmosphere. Under such strenuous circumstances, is Shivered able to deliver a concept album worth risking life and limb with Chains, or will it be doomed (heh) to solitary confinement?

While single-member bands are somewhat common in metal, Mohammad Maki is putting on a show with Shivered. Clean vocals, deathly howls, drumming, piano, bass, production, and guitar are all delivered by Maki, and outside of a couple of featured musicians and a few blemishes with some overly ambitious high notes that he can’t quite reach with his clean range, every element feels tight and polished. Even the production is properly cavernous, serving the haunting atmosphere that is pervasive throughout Chains. No matter what your opinion of the music is, Maki is clearly a talented and driven musician.

Talent aside, Chains is firmly rooted in the school of gothic death/doom purveyed by bands like Paradise Lost, but it leans into the clean side of things, with Maki delivering a majority of the vocals in a high-pitched, ghostly drone. This is likely where listeners will either stick with Chains or drop it entirely. Maki’s voice suits the material; his heavily accented, almost lullaby-esque singing adds to the ethereal ambience of this dark concept album, but a few notes prove too difficult, and at times his voice feels at its breaking point, like on “Human Parasite”. Despite these flawed moments, I found something alluring about Maki’s singing, and his odd pronunciation and unique sound grew on me with repeated listens, making even simple phrases into earworms in ways I didn’t expect entirely due to their delivery.

Chains does suffer from repetition, and while I like what Shivered is putting down, each track follows a similar formula. Grand doom riffs open the track and lead into melodic piano backings with spectral vocals. I kept wishing for Chains to let loose and put the foot on the gas, which it finally does towards the end of the album, which is the strongest part of the record. “Rebirth in Wrath” ends with an all-out death metal assault, and I wish Maki would lean into the harsh vocals more. “Hanging Bloom” features female vocalist Julie Orwell, and it turns the track into an epic duet between Maki and Orwell. I hope to see Orwell return, or even better, become a consistent member of Shivered. Maki and Orwell make for a great team between their different vocal styles, and he leans into the funeral doom with his rasping, harsh vocals on the track. Outside of a few tracks in the back half of the album, Chains doesn’t ever quite open up, but the album is consistent and satisfying across its fifty-two-minute runtime. It would be served by cutting five minutes from the album here and there, but no individual song is a weak point.

Chains is an album that immediately hooked me when I booted it up, but as it continued, it grew more formulaic. Surprisingly, the more I listened, the more I grew to enjoy what Maki was going for with this dour concept album. It may have grown predictable, but in the vein of many great metal bands, the one song that Shivered does; it does well. Chains is full of big riffs, some light Paradise Lost and Katatonia worship, and a heaping helping of atmosphere. The singular talent of Mohammad Maki grounds all of this. If you are on the hunt for some satisfying death/doom with a focus on melody, you can do much worse than Chains. Shivered is on the cusp of true greatness, and with a little bit of editing, the next album may break free.

Rating: Good
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: shivered.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/shivered
Releases Worldwide: November 2nd, 2025

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SHIVERED - Chains [FULL ALBUM] 2025 (lyrics in 'pinned' comment)

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Paradise Lost – Ascension Review

By Steel Druhm

As a huge fan of the salad days of the “Peaceville Three,” I felt obliged to follow Paradise Lost’s career throughout the 90s as they shifted from their raw death-doom birth through the refined melancholic doom heard on Icon, the Metallica-adjacent, stadium doom of Draconian Times, and into their Depeche Mode fancier period with Host and Believe in Nothing. That last era was a bridge too far for me, and by the time they made their way back to doom on 2005s eponymous release, I had moved on. I only paid casual attention to their output thereafter until 2020s Obsidian. That one was solid enough to get me tentatively back on board, but I didn’t come into Ascension expecting big things, just a solid late-career outing by a group of seasoned gloom-mongers. Ascension functions as a guided tour through the various eras of the band’s 35 year career, and while that could make for a very disjointed listen given the amount of ground Paradise Lost covered over the decades, it feels like a well-catered reunion of dear olde friends. More importantly, it features some of the most consistently impressive songcraft the band’s mustered in years. Age brings a certain wisdom, but sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle. I’m not looking to overanalyze which got us here, I’m just enjoying the hearse ride.

It doesn’t hurt that Paradise Lost kick things off with one of the most aggressive and heavy songs they’ve churned out in a long time. “Serpent on the Cross” is a massive, murderous slab of doom that kicks all the crypts and tickles the mortician. It’s got mournful harmonies, weighty doom riffs, and the right amount of despair, yet it still comes hard with burly riffs and knocks you upside the head with a memorable refrain. Nick Holmes sounds born again hard, and Greg Macintosh and Aaron Aedy bring tons of heft and emotion to the string bending. This is my favorite Paradise Lost song since their heyday and I can’t stop spinning it. In fact, as my beloved and perpetually hapless N.Y. Jets got pounded into assdust Sunday, they did so to the haunting leads of this charnel beast. This victory is followed by another in the form of “Tyrants Serenade” which hits at the perfect middle ground between their Draconian Times and One Second eras. It even conjures a bit of Type O Negative magic courtesy of Olde Nick’s baritone crooning. This one is an earworm infection waiting to happen, and you should catch it. “Salvation” is the big, epic doom set piece, and it doesn’t disappoint, plodding and heaving for 7 minutes of morose glory while raising the ghosts of vintage Paradise Lost along the way. It even reminds me of Fvneral Fvkk here and there.

With a front half this massive, it was almost inevitable that things would tail off as Ascension moved along, but Paradise Lost holds the slippage to a minimum. “Silence Like the Grave” and and “Diluvium” bring that Metallica-friendly Draconian Times sound back in force for inspired doom stomp and clompers, and even when they revisit their Depeche Mode as on “Sirens,” they keep things just heavy enough to bull through painlessly. What’s so impressive is that even though the band revisits all the familiar hollowed ground, things feel fresh and new rather than recycled. Somehow Ascension manages to avoid filler and there isn’t a track here I’d call weak, though “Sirens” is merely good. At 51 minutes, the album never feels too long or bogged down, and most songs sit in the 4-5 minute window and move along briskly.

I’m high on Nick Holmes’ performance here. He sounds great and as versatile as ever, ranging from sadboi Goth croons to brutal death croaks and all stops in-between. He really gets nasty at times, even sounding downright funeral doomish at points. He’s also got a great sense of where to put the melodic clean breaks for maximum impact. Greg Macintosh and Aaron Aedy outdo themselves with a high-quality collection of riffs that cover a range of moods and styles. They bring the doom hammer down hard on the maximalist cuts like “Serpent on the Cross” and “Salvation,” but also amplify the moody cuts to keep things pulsing with vitality. The subtly morose harmonies win me over, even on the more hard-charging numbers, and the level of writing remains strong with moments of greatness dotting the runtime.

It’s rare a band as long in the tooth as Paradise Lost uncorks a late career album that can stand among the giants in their catalog, but Ascension is one such slippery aberration. It’s the kind of release your brain tells you shouldn’t be as good as it is, but after a week-plus marinating in it, the quality cannot be denied. I’m happy to see a long-running institution like Paradise Lost get another win and show they still have ichor in their cold veins. Ascension indeed!

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Nuclear Blast
Websites: paradiselost.co.uk | facebook.com/paradiselostofficial | instagram.com/officialparadiselost
Releases Worldwide: September 19th, 2025

Grymm

So, question: say you’ve been a band for almost 40 years, and 80% of your line-up has remained completely unchanged, save for the near-Spinal Tapification that’s reserved for whoever happens to find themselves on the drum throne.1 You’ve gone from the slowest of death/doom, to near-Metallica heights of superstardom in your home country, to a severe Depeche Mode-influenced left turn, just to wrap yourselves back around through Gothic doom territory and back home to death-doom in the wildest “Peaceville Three” ouroboros ever. You’re also about to release your seventeenth album. With the exceptions of legendary acts, we’re usually lucky to see bands craft seven albums, let alone seventeen. So what do you do to keep yourselves fresh and motivated? What do you bring to the party that will not only excite your longtime fanbase, but also hopefully bring in some fresh faces to your music?

If you’re Paradise Lost, you simply condense all of your experiences into a singular vision, and write your best collection of songs to date. Ascension lives up to the promise of its name, given how much of this album soars above its peers in both heft and hook. From the opening riff of “Serpent of the Cross” to the fading of the closing guitar solo in “The Precipice,” 51 minutes of doom metal have never flown by so damn fast before, nor would it had the material been written by less experienced hands. Since a good portion of this album is DOOOOOOM (in all caps-locked letters, complete with at least 6 O’s), that’s no easy feat.

And how DOOOOOOM are we talking? Take third track (and album highlight) “Salvation.” Between the foreboding riffs of Gregor Mackintosh and Aaron Aedy, Mackintosh’s mournful melodies, and new/former drummer Guido Zima Montanarini guiding the back-end like a funeral march, “Salvation” could have easily fit in on Strigoi’s last album had it not been for Nick Holmes’ vocal performance, whether it’s in his cavernous growls, his anguished mid-range cleans during the chorus, or even the impressive higher-ranged singing towards the end. “Salvation” presents itself as a masterclass in epic doom/death musicianship and songwriting, and one that’s making a mad run for Song o’ the Year honors come December.

It’s not like there aren’t any other challengers for that spot on Ascension, either. Late album scorcher “Diluvium” starts off as a plodding, downtrodden number, before riffing up a storm towards the song’s latter half, with Mackintosh cutting loose with solo after solo. “Lay a Wreath Upon the World,” one of the few Paradise Lost numbers to feature an acoustic guitar, pulls you in with hypnotic female wailing and pensive atmosphere. “Silence Like the Grave” and “Tyrant’s Serenade” bring the speed up just enough, acting as energizing mood-setters for the album’s front half. And that’s the only qualm I really have with the album; the album feels front-loaded with the faster numbers, with the album’s second half being more moody and slower. There’s not a song on here I would consider to be “filler,” but it’s an observation that stuck around even after the album’s wrapped up.

Paradise Lost have every right to dial it in right now, having cemented themselves as legends of death/doom metal. Thank fuck they didn’t, though, as Ascension has comfortably nestled itself amongst my top five favorite Paradise Lost albums, acting as a strong thread between the unfuckwithable Draconian Times, their underrated dark horse Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us, and their return to the grave in The Plague Within. Who would have thought that, by reaching into their vault of classic albums, they would not only put together something fresh and timeless, but also make a strong case for one of their best ever? Easily a Top Ten contender, and one of the year’s best doom metal albums, bar none.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

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KATATONIA – Viva Emptiness Limited Marble Vinyl Out In August

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The Bleak Picture – Shades of Life Review

By Maddog

It’s been a draining year. Lacking the mental energy for new music, I’ve subsisted on a diet of ISIS and Fvneral Fvkk. Clouded by the doomy stylings of the latter, I decided to make my return to reviewing with dismal death-doom. Despite releasing their debut just last year, Finland’s The Bleak Picture is a project of members of Autumnfall. That said, these two bands sound worlds apart, as their names betray. Abandoning the blackened scenery of Autumnfall, The Bleak Picture paints a bleak picture with melodic death-doom that reeks of Finland. Channeling the icons of sadboi history, Shades of Life is a flawed but worthwhile slab of morose doom.

You won’t find much innovation here, but The Bleak Picture has learned from the best. Blending harsh vocals and spoken word, doomy plains and deathy mountain ranges, Shades of Life consists of familiar elements. The opener “Plagued by Sorrow” offers the listener zero seconds of respite before launching into a persistent doom riff. Melodic guitar leads steer the album along, stitching the doomy cuts together in a manner that recalls Enshine (“Without the I”). Rather than slowing to a standstill, The Bleak Picture uses Insomnium riffs to push the album along without diluting its sorrow. The guitars (handled by Jussi Hänninen, along with the other instruments) are the core of Shades of Life, but Tero Ruohonen’s vocals broaden its horizons. While he largely dwells in standard harsh territory, Ruohonen’s cleans tinge the album with gothic influences, like the distorted spoken word of “Absolution.” Indeed, sections like the straightforward rock of “Without the I” recall Paradise Lost. However, lest this lengthy description fool you, Shades of Life is largely standard fare.

It feels criminal to listen to Shades of Life on a 90-degree summer day. The Bleak Picture conveys emotion through the sheer enormity of their riffs, burying the listener like an avalanche (“Absolution”). Elsewhere, Shades of Life deftly intersperses these assaults with tranquility, like the transition from an explosive chorus to minimalist bass-led instrumentals on “Plagued by Sorrow.” These strengths reach their apex on the 11-minute spectacle “Silent Exit.” Evoking Swallow the Sun’s Plague of Butterflies, the track progresses through a nightmarish acoustic melody, forceful doom riffs, and girthy bass lines. Cult of Luna-style drumming leads the song into a climactic ending that raises the bar even further. Across these highlights, The Bleak Picture’s sophomore release boasts a mature approach to songwriting.

Shades of Life still struggles to transcend its melodic death-doom formula. The album’s biggest weakness is its monotony. In their quest for chunky riffs, The Bleak Picture tends to overuse ideas, emulating an uninspired version of Rapture (“Code of Ethics”). Even the album’s best pieces sometimes fizzle out, like the abrupt ending of the otherwise-powerful “Absolution.” Similarly, while the penultimate track “Silent Exit” showcases the best of Shades of Life, the closer “City of Ghosts” settles into a low-energy doom routine that never picks up steam. Despite its apparent variety of influences, The Bleak Picture’s by-the-book approach to death-doom doesn’t always keep my interest.

An album like Shades of Life is difficult to dissect; its success hinges on the heart, not the brain. The Bleak Picture is on the right path, and tracks like “Silent Exit” hit hard with their bulky riffwork and creative variety. But as a whole, Shades of Life isn’t the gut punch I’d hoped for. It doesn’t match the raw power of Paradise Lost, the otherworldly sadness of Enshine, or the narrative prowess of Insomnium. Still, I have no regrets. There are strong whiffs of talent here, and with its mature and tempered approach to songwriting, Shades of Life is an easy, rewarding listen. It’s worth a shot for anyone who prefers moping over sunlight.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Ardua Music
Websites: thebleakpicture.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/thebleakpicture
Releases Worldwide: June 27th, 2025

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