Ah, funeral doom. Even at its most adept, most melodic and most majestic there is something about it that means it is forever condemned to the grey, quiet shadows. The pace perhaps, the rich, often romantic melancholy even. Whatever, there it lives and thankfully there it thrives, unassuming and intrinsically imperious all at once.
The triple L toting HellLight come from Brazil and they share a certain area of sound with their wonderful countrymen Mythological Cold Towers but take the atmosphere in a different direction. This has a traditional funeral doom feel with those ponderous, keyboard and mournful melody wrapped riffs trudging on past all hope as though dragging thick rich velvet curtains behind them. The vocals dip into the breath heavy death style but they also blaze huge colour with clean, epic vocals often in harmony which ignites those embers in your heart as they reach for something in the heavens always out of reach. There is a very human touch brought out by these fine vocals and the thoughtful guitar lines, something that places the listener at the heart of the music, and as the title track spins it’s web for twelve minutes I find myself forever staring upwards as though some universal truth is unfolding before my eyes.
Yes it is very, very accomplished music. Compelling and enthralling stuff.
‘Shades Of Black’ initially captures some of that Finnish sound of a certain band, where the growled vocals seem to push the riff out as they breathe, but the clean vocals pull it away into a more gothic realm which is, perhaps, the overriding sense of the album as a whole. Dark rooms, the tragic philosopher staring into a void which has long since ceased to even glance back.
With eight tracks reaching out to around eighty minutes this is a hefty banquet laid out for you but aficionados of funeral doom have stamina and it should certainly be noted that HellLight have a fair deft touch when it comes to keeping your emotions engaged. Their mix of the death and clean vocals shows a fine comprehension of the drama they can call and the way the keyboards seem to ooze from the riffs is superb. Simple, sparse sections heavy on the piano particularly on the closing epic ‘The Ordinary Eyes’ add a delicacy to the overall texture and a variation that lesser bands either forget or use clumsily.
There is very little to pick out as below par here. Sometimes the sharpness of the drums jerks me from the deeper flow of the riff, maybe a couple of the vocal melodies have a slightly whining quality which for me is absolute death for funeral doom – this music should go so far beyond self pity, deep into the pitiless realms of the bleak and the absence of light and hope that such things cease to have meaning – but thankfully they are short lived and the monolithic cliffs of despair rise once more each time.
Well worth your investment if time: Slowly wade into it and just let the waters take you where they will.
(7.5/10 Gizmo)
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