Gelderland’s (A Knight’s Tale immediately sprang to mind!) Celestial Season are celebrating their thirtieth year. Thirty years of bastard heavy death doom filled with melancholy and pathos. Mysterium I follows the “comeback” album The Secret Teachings, which was their first full length in 20 years. As a strange person that missed the whole death doom thing the first time round in the 90’s – despite being a goth and a metaller at the time, I only became aware of Celestial Season in the last couple of years thanks to my radio co-host Bazooka Joe introducing me to the 2020 remaster of 1995’s wonderful Solar Lovers album. So, I was pretty excited to listen to this new one.
If you are as blissfully aware of this Dutch band as I was the first thing to note is their wonderful use of strings alongside the harsh and doomy atmospheres. The gorgeous violin of Jiska Ter Bals and soulful cello of Ellianne Annemaat fire pinpricks of light and alternatively even deeper shadow through the 7 tracks here. Stefan Ruiters vocals serve as gruff gravelly accompaniment to the soaring guitars and doomy riffs of Olly Smit and Pim Van Zanen.
Any Death/Doom band worth their blood-stained salt need a proficient and heavy as fuck rhythm section. Lucas Van Slegtenhorst’s filthy low end keeps the others in the darkness whilst Jason Kohnen forces the poor swine to keep trudging through the mire with his relentless and gargantuan drum sound. This is proper, heartachingly sombre heavy music. The centrepiece – This Glorious Summer is a tale of love and possibly lives lost where the ache is so exquisite it renders the most masochistic human a gibbering wreck. Deliciously painful.
Celestial Season know when to wrap things up – which is fairly unusual in the doom world. Tracks here do not go beyond seven minutes and the string section stops any nodding out moments to indulgent low end riffs. (I love those moments usually). The pacing throughout the album is varied – I mean there is no blistering blastbeats or arpeggio scales but the septet know when to move from slow funeral trudge to head-nodding quick let’s get out of the woods amble. Black Water Mirrors which opens the album shows this in abundance. The use of strings and percussion throughout gives the track the feeling of passing though into another realm and Ruiters vocals are dropped to that of a dragon like Dutch beast. The violins tear through like a razor through wrists (look they’ve got me at it) whilst the riffs are big and beefy. This is proper romantic metal!
Comparisons are lazy but are the reviewe’rs friend – there are bits of Celestial Seasons contemporaries here – Paradise lost and My Dying Bride and there is also the cinematic sense of Bal Sagoth but more grounded on earth than Hyboria- the vocals often take on a Byronesque lilt.
Sundown Transcend Us begins as a groovy doomy number but has a real filth hidden within it – it has a little Southern Death Cult in it and then goes from darkness to sludgy nastiness for several moments. There is something really sexy about this number – like a sexy Bolt Thrower.
The guitar line that runs through Endgame is like moody Thunderstruck but soon segues into a gothy doomy darkness with a huuuuge riff and a razor wire guitar of heartbreak. Then the strings! Shit how much emotion can a person take!
All That is Known is a low, bass strings hanging like weeping willow branches track. The only thing that stops it diving deep into Primitive Man territory is the lilting but gravelly vocal line, the crystal clear mid paced drums and a soaring guitar line offering a guiding light in the dark. Like Gary Moore leading you out of the neolithic swamp.
This album is alleged to be part of a trio with Mysterium I being the first. The title track which ends this opus is filled with lilting strings and lush, moody, doomy grooves. A fitting end and a fitting jumping off point, I hope to the next instalment. The vocals are over the top here, much more of the Bal Sagoth style – lots of reverb and resonance. Ruiters feels 20 foot high like a Titan looming over the object of his desire. It’s a little cheesy and over wrought but when the music is so biting why not overstate things I guess?
Mysterium I is a giant cinematic slab of death doom shot through with gothic romance and lost loves. Give it a whirl on a rainswept hilltop near you.
(8/10 Matt Mason)
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