After a series of underground releases, digital demos and one cassette – 2015’s self released, self-titled debut – this will come as a shock to Yith’s no doubt growing fan base. A flashy digipack release and two vinyl versions of Dread, no less. But don’t be alarmed – because this sees the (you guessed it) one man band in fine form and cranking up the lush, heavily blackened doom antics on a scale that should provide plenty of cheer (or whatever the opposite it for black metal fans) for Yith loyalists while netting in a wider audience for this hidden gem of a band at the same time. The impressive looking heavyweight album, released on  Hellthrasher / Vendetta , may lose a little of the bedroom-studio production qualities, but what the hell: even if that is a factor, everything we get in return is worth it.

Dread is a giant slab of atmosphere that clashes together the sound of thunderous black metal and elephantine doom – with the emphasis on the black metal. To the uninitiated, that might just sound like an outfit trying to stretch the boundaries but deep in the world of the Yith mastermind (let’s just call him ‘Yith’) it sounds like the most natural thing in the world to do. Perhaps imagine wandering through a weather-beaten, basalt-encrusted landscape where strange, ancient monoliths mark the landscape and eerie presences dwell: that’s Yith. The sweeping charge of the first track sets the bar pretty high from the outset with a nice Eastern tremolo followed by a crushing riff. It’s the first taste, on this release at least, of how brilliantly Yith creates his world and which continues on the second track to a perhaps even more stunning degree.

As the album unfolds, Yith sets about building shoegazing monuments to his chosen faith, with five extended tracks (and a couple of instrumentals) which rely heavily on the kind of repetition that should have the average fan of both black metal and doom settling into the back of the bat cave / gothic mansion / bedsit to enjoy a glass of the finest vintage and a moment to ponder the wonders of his / her own imagination. Some of the oddities of the first four releases have been stripped from Dread leaving merely the giant structures of sound in their wake. But that’s not to say that his knack for chiselled, windswept composition has been forgotten in the process.

The last of the main tracks, Upon Dark Shores, just like all the others, could stand alone – full to bursting with emotion and yet standing, unscaleable and absolutely emotionless at the same time. Halfway through the track builds into a massive, blackened, grinding crescendo before falling gradually once again into the jaws of saurian doom and finally into the lashing waves of Dread’s heart. The final ambient noise of Immurement is the perfect counterbalance and we could almost certainly have had more of the same in the midst of the album just to provide more space to admire Dread’s skyscraping pillars. Either way this will please the ears of those who dream of lands where forlorn titans sink in abject contemplation of what might have been.

(8.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)

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