Review Summary: Who doesn't love Halloween metal?
Hooded Menace seem to always slip under the radar when it comes to the best modern death metal bands. Not to me, but it seems universally they're not mentioned with bands like Ulcerate, Ad Nauseam, Artificial Brain, etc. I'm not sure why that's the case considering they've released 7 albums now that are chock full of amazing riffage and Halloween-ish atmospheres that would make even the hardest of ghouls backtrack into their graves. Well, they're making sure everyone takes notice with their brand new album,
Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration, because it just may be their crowning achievement.
Honestly, it's hard for me to point out individual highlight tracks because they're all highlights. With the exception of the intro ‘Twilight Passages’, which is only a minute long, each and every track possesses qualities that would make it the best track on the album. ‘Pale Masquerade’ starts off with a high-pitched, thunderous riff that wouldn't sound out of place on a 90's Paradise Lost record. That's where their evolution comes into play. Harri's Nick Holmes-esque shouts and Lasse's gothic-tinged riffage sounds unlike anything they've ever done before.
‘Portrait Without a Face’ is way more atmosphere-focused, but just as effective. It's almost funeral doom-sounding, with a simplistic riff playing and plodding drumming giving you a sense of dread and claustrophobia. The drumming is really the star of this track. It's pretty simple, but it lulls you into a sense of calm when in reality fear is right around the corner. Once again, the gothic influences are as prevalent as they've ever been. ‘Daughters of Lingering Pain’ is more like the Hooded Menace we've all been used to with pounding death doom riffage complimenting the ominous atmosphere. The track that follows, ‘Lugubrious Dance’, is the fastest track on the album and continues the death metal carnage of the previous track.
These guys’ ability to mix death and doom metal has been evident for almost two decades now, but adding in these heavy metal and goth influences into their core, and adding a huge dose of them, shows their ability to adapt to new things and not be stagnant. Hell, there's even a cover of a Duran Duran song, ‘Save a Prayer’! Now, I've never heard the original (that I can remember), but this version is drenched in melancholy. The main riff sounds so sad and apocalyptic that it kind of reminds me of the grimness of Type O Negative. The closer, ‘Into Haunted Oblivion’, is the best track on the album and it takes every element that I've mentioned so far and mashes them into one gorgeously grotesque 10-minute track.
My guess is that Hooded Menace released this album in the first week of October because it is the essential sound for the season and they are the absolute masters of Halloween metal. Nobody does it better than these guys and they've only continued to get better since their masterful debut all the way back in 2008. The honing of this new sound of theirs makes for a tight performance and an all around masterclass on how to create not just death doom, but metal as a whole. Not many bands in modern death metal can compete with Hooded Menace.
