Aphonic Threnody: When Death Comes

The name of this band is interesting to me: Aphonia refers to the loss of one's voice whereas a threnody is a lament, most often for the dead. I suppose the idea behind the name has something to do with mourning the dead, but not being able to do it well enough. Put another way, how do we convey feelings of loss? What precisely is the sound of lamentation and despair?

The members of this band, at least in terms of doom metal, ought to have a pretty good answer to these questions. Aphonic Threnody, after all, is made up of members of quite a few bands: Uma, Dea Marica, Arcana Coelestia, Gallow God, Locus Mortis, and others. To list them all would take up too much space. I don't necessarily like the idea of a supergroup, but this is one of them.

The songs on this album are all pretty long—at least ten minutes each, but several of them are even longer. The dominant mood is sadness, but not the kind that is simply wallowing. Instead, it's the searching kind of sadness, the kind that tries to find beauty in the stillness and the longing. The music, however, is never simply about any one mood or feeling. As I said, it's about finding the beauty in sadness and so it moves around, taking one idea and exploring it, only to then discover a new musical idea and then develop it. Things get a beet too long here and there, but the album is overall very engaging and powerful. For the end of the year / early January blahs, this is a great album to feed, and perhaps lift, one's melancholy spirits.

Track Listing:
1. The Children's Sleep
2. Death Obsession
3. Dementia
4. The Ghost's Song
5. Our Way to the Ground

Added: December 31st 2014
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 2035
Language: english

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