Sometimes discovering a funeral doom band is a little bit like stumbling into someone’s dingy, all but forgotten dwelling. A dust-filled, grainy backroom with four or five huddled bodies, solemn faces and pitted instruments making their way to some sonic Holy Grail while the outside world carries on regardless. Take a seat on the floor in the corner and soon you’re lost and wrapped in the sound that the casual listener would have so easily dismissed. Stoic Dissention is too frenetic and too progressive to be pure funeral doom but boy is this heavy, almost to the point of being impenetrable at times. The vocals, which are delivered in several different hues, are of the rasping variety but often simply melt into the background of distortion in this darkly organic sludge-athon. The guitars range from sorrowful wailing to clattering discord with drums that occasionally slow down to a virtual standstill. This is not a house with a welcome mat laid on the front door step. You enter at risk to your own sanity and will not leave with your inner world intact. It’s an effort to pull back those heavy cobwebs and sweep away layers of dust and grime to find the shiny surfaces beneath it all – cracks in the darkness that soon become slender veins of gold.
Stoic Dissention’s Autochthon is a refreshingly flexible take on the funeral doom genre that seems to go wherever its masterminds Dave Borrusch, Zach Salmans and their three like-minded pals want to take it – sometimes to the darkest depths of introspection, the sombre edges of prog rock and then briefly onto the shores of mournful black metal. It begins in a rather tranquil place and firmly in familiar territory before plunging us into a less predictable world with the grating discord of Weathered Stones. It’s a diversion designed to set your emotions on edge and destabilise you for the unpredictable ride ahead. Indeed it almost seems there is no place these guys will not go to pursue the ultimate doom heaviness. On the third track it’s difficult to shake the feeling that we’ve just been put through some kind of test of our commitment as things start to slowly unfold and get more interesting. A gothic trip into Autochthon’s yellow, decaying world is what follows and the crafting of a sound that would be perfect for, well, sitting back and sinking into your own self.
This is not an album for the impatient. Nor is it for the ‘doomsters among us that are looking for that magical crescendo hidden inside many funeral doom albums. There are moments of rapture that infrequently rise above the deeply downbeat steady sludge. But this is an album that will take you into some very dark shadows. A significant shift too away from their more purely black metal roots planted on the first album. But for all that, this is an intriguing exercise in experimentation and creatively that seems to take the adventurous spirit of black metal, the emotive instincts of sludge and mix it all with their more linear funereal counterpart. Each track is a totally different experience and leaves you with a mixed feelings that they are making you work hard for your buck but that every minute with the band is a worthwhile investment in a sound that grows on you with an undeniable, irresistible pull.
(7.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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