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Spread the Disease – The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering. Review
Once upon a time, Spread the Disease was a frenetic Canadian metalcore band playing a brand of skronk-…
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Once upon a time, Spread the Disease was a frenetic Canadian metalcore band playing a brand of skronk-heavy, screamo-adjacent murder music laced with electronic and black metal influences. Their 1998 debut, We Bleed From Many Wounds, is something of a classic among chaotic metalcore devotees, while 1999 follow-up The Sheer Force of Inertia is respectable in its own right. Yet life has a habit of getting in the way of intense musical pursuits, and after those two albums, the band called it quits. Years later, Spread the Disease has reunited and returned with an intimidating slab of aural annihilation: the ominously titled The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering., which purports to expand upon the black metal elements of their earlier work. Can this cohort of Canucks recapture the caustic vitriol of their youthful output?
The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering. is less of a maximalist, mathy affair than Spread the Disease’s previous work. Instead, the band opts for a more straightforward merger of second-wave black metal frostbite and 2000s metalcore beef, a combination that works largely because everybody involved seems determined to play it as angrily as humanly possible. Opener “Light Opaque” establishes a formula much of the album follows, its five-plus minutes alternating between meaty tremolo passages and classic At the Gates “0-7-5” riffing over syncopated chugs. “Gods and Politics” weaves blackened leads and tried-and-true blast sections into classic hardcore moves, including a tom-led pullback and satisfying d-beats, while lead single “Indoctrinated” unleashes a blistering array of icy riffcraft that recalls Anaal Nathrakh with the occasional punky power-chord section. For the most part, this is plenty effective. The songs carry an exciting sense of momentum, the individual parts are competent if somewhat expected, and each transition feels natural. I only wish the longer runtimes yielded more genuinely standout moments.
Spread the Disease does make some considerations for album flow, placing short interludes between the main tracks and slightly shifting its blackened hardcore milieu on the B-side. “Intermezzo I” is a brief harsh noise piece that breaks up the onslaught of the opening tracks, while “Intermezzo II” takes a more ambient approach, propelled by chime-like clean guitar. “Outro,” meanwhile, closes the album with a somber sound collage. The final two “main” tracks also put a different spin on the band’s established formula. “Summer Wanes” leans into a more Zao-like, rollicking metalcore assault accented by bursts of blackened tremolo, while the seven-minute “The Blight in Their Eyes” opens up into a sludgy second half, transforming what could have been a typical breakdown into an effective, atmospheric conclusion.
There are a lot of impressive elements to The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering., but for me, the pieces never quite coalesce into something greater than the sum of their parts. Spread the Disease knows how to pack these songs with well-constructed, pissed-off riffs that blur the line between metalcore and black metal, but despite the variety on display, some ideas linger just a tad too long. Certain riffs feel like boilerplate black metal or cliché metalcore, and their juxtaposition doesn’t necessarily elevate them. With each main song passing the five-minute mark, the propulsive energy that fuels the record can occasionally dwindle, especially when a repetitive tremolo riff overstays its welcome. On a brief, 30-minute album with only five non-interlude tracks, these moments stand out more than they otherwise might. Despite this issue, the individual performances are consistently strong, and tracks like “Summer Wanes” and “Gods and Politics” demonstrate a well-considered take on this particular sound.
With The Darkness. The Dread. The Suffering., Spread the Disease has delivered an intriguing piece of blackened hardcore. There are plenty of fun ideas throughout the record, and it certainly isn’t lacking in aggression, but it’s missing a certain oomph and the considered songwriting needed to tie everything together. Fans of the band’s early material curious to hear its black metal tendencies dragged further into the foreground, should not be dissuaded, and it is undeniably cool to hear Spread the Disease sounding this venomous after so many years. Yet, beneath the frost, blasts, and nonstop riffing lies a record that strikes me as merely average. A nasty reunion, certainly. Just not quite a triumphant one.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hypaethral Records
Websites: spreadthedisease.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/spreadthedisease_official
Releases Worldwide: July 10th, 2026
Oromet – The Sinking Isle Review
By ClarkKent
‘Tis the season. No, not the holidays. ‘Tis the season for doom and gloom, at least here in southeastern Michigan, where the days have grown shorter, clouds are overcast, the temps have dropped, and the trees have lost just about all of their colorful leaves. To celebrate this season, I have decided to review nothing but doom for the month of November. First up is the sophomore album from Sacramento, California’s Oromet, The Sinking Isle. Their self-titled debut impressed Cherd enough to earn a spot on his best of the year list in 2023. Oromet’s two members have plenty of experience with a myriad of other doom bands, from the blackened versions of Desiccation and Occlith to the stoner doom of Battle Hag to the non-doom atmoblack of Feral Season. As experts on sounds both atmospheric and sorrowful, the duo has pounced on funeral doom for their most recent project. What they offer the genre is a lush beauty that deserves your full attention.
The Sinking Isle brings back the same formula found on Oromet—one 20-minute song followed by two songs just over 10 minutes each—but layered with more complexity. The music is at once serene and meditative, as evidenced by the opening sounds of rainfall and lightly plucked acoustics on “Hollow Dominion.” As the song continues, there’s a sense of dueling moods between despair and hope. Oromet conveys these moods through contrasting guitar tones: the heavy, dark tone of the bass on the one hand, and the up-tuned guitar melodies on the other. As “Hollow Dominion” moves on from the natural sounds of rainfall to the plodding of the guitar and bass, a sense of sorrow pervades. Minutes later, guitarist Dan Aguilar plays a more uplifting tone that echoes the hopeful tunes of Counting Skies rather than the weighty riffs of fellow funeral doomsters Godthrymm. From the desolation of nature—the “sinking” isle, the “hollow” dominion, the “forsaken” tarn—somehow emerges a feeling of hope, maybe healing.
While all aspects of The Sinking Isle work, I find the drumming by Patrick Hills particularly arresting. Funeral doom typically features plodding beats, as if matching the power and pace of a giant’s gait. That’s there on The Sinking Isle, but there’s also more. Hills sometimes plays sudden bursts of staccato blasts, as if trying to encourage a brisk march. These beats impress a sense of constant action, as if something is trying to break free. Eleven minutes into “Hollow Dominion,” Hills surprises with war-like drum blasts that sound reminiscent of machine gun fire from a World War II film. The war-sounding drums return on “Marathon,” but this time with the cadence and feel of cannon fire. These moments contain a surreal violence, and they always precede periods of tranquility, lulls in the onslaught of guitars and growls. While the guitar melodies are mesmerizing, the drums demand you pay even closer attention.
The paradoxes that pervade The Sinking Isle help make it such a compelling listen. The most obvious paradox is that between despair and hope. There are also, as described above, moments of violence and moments of serenity. Another paradox is one between realism and fantasy. The guitars and drumming provide grounding, placing us somewhere in the realm of the real, but then there are periods of synths that sound like something out of a sci-fi/fantasy world. Despite the snail’s pace, Oromet keeps you on your toes, keeps you wondering and guessing at the puzzle the music weaves. Moods shift from peace to sorrow, from violence to hope. Yet because it is funeral doom, these moods take time to develop before shifting to the next. The Sinking Isle meditates deeply on these themes and lulls you with its lush soundscapes. By the closing minutes of “Forsaken Tarn,” the mix of sorrow and hope that has dominated the record reveals a sense of beauty in the loneliness and desolation the music conveys. It’s an astonishing feat.
The Sinking Isle fell into my hands at a hectic time in my life, and it has served as a healing balm. It is a meditation on loss, on things falling apart, on loneliness. But the lightness of the melodies ensures these dark feelings never overwhelm. As monumental as Oromet’s debut was, this one is a step forward thematically and musically. It reinvents what funeral doom can be—not just a crushing sense of sorrow, but a genre that can raise your spirits as well. It leaves me hopeful for what Oromet can achieve in the future.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hypaethral Records
Website: Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: November 7th, 2025
#2025 #40 #AmericanMetal #BattleHag #CountingSkies #Desiccation #FeralSeason #FuneralDoom #Godthrymm #HypaethralRecords #Nov25 #Occlith #Oromet #Review #Reviews #TheSinkingIsle
By Steel Druhm
2024 hasn’t been the greatest year for doom thus far save for Crypt Sermon’s massive missive. I find myself largely swimming in the death and trad swamps, but I crave big, molar-rattling doom to round out my unhealthy listening regime. Fortunately, Greek funeral doom act Föhn have arrived to help with their mammoth debut Condescending. Borrowing from acts like Esoteric and Ataraxie, Föhn deliver monolithic long-form compositions of lumbering grimness with enough sheer mass to crush a steel factory. But rather than merely recycle the same old sounds, the band adds their own unique flair by incorporating manic, unhinged saxophone blasts that sound like they escaped from a Sigh album only to get locked in the Gimp Box in Imperial Triumphant’s sax dungeon. There are plenty of the expected doom tropes present, but the dark jazz element provides interesting textures, sometimes nightmarish, other times soothing, and always atmospheric. The result is an album that feels familiar yet alien enough to intrigue and keep you anxiously awaiting further developments.
In a show of ball-cocky bravado, Condescending opens with the nearly 14-minute “Bereft,” and trust me when I tell you that you’ll remember your time spent with this rampaging beast. This is gargantuan doom designed to convey a sense of existential dread, and it does so with crushing, abrasive riffs that show no mercy. Running over the top of the guitar are schizophrenic sax lines that scream and caterwaul like demons from the Ninth Level of Hell. It makes for an unsettling soundscape but as the song lurches forward, the traditional doom idioms gain prominence, and earth-shaking death roars guide you deeper into the void. Subtle melodic interludes break up the death march here and there and eventually, the sax returns to provide a melancholic and poignant counterpart to the 50-ton riffs. It’s all highly effective and emotionally evocative. This may well be the Doom Song o’ the Year. Not to be outdone easily, “A Day After” opens with ominous ambient droning and the sounds of children playing, creating cognitive dissonance and a sense of dread before the riffs arrive to oppress you with suffocating mass. Subdued, minimalist melodic strumming provides a brief respite from the monolithic riffs and cavernous, reverb-heavy death roars, and though it’s very much the classic funeral doom sound and style, Föhn execute it very well without relying on the wild card saxophone for texture this time. It’s just you and them in a dank, dark space for 13-plus minutes and it will damage your calm.
17-minute mega-closer “Persona” uses harrowing soundbites of a woman discussing the nightmarish underworld of drug addiction and sex trafficking, overlaid with sounds of women crying and screaming, undergirded with guitar lines that remind me of Headshrinker’s massive Callous Indifference. To say it’s impactful damns it with faint praise. Later, the sax returns to add noir-esque atmosphere, forlorn and downtrodden. While Condescending is intensely gripping, it’s a lot to digest in one sitting at a portly 57-plus minutes. It’s easy to get drawn into the world Föhn creates and lose track of time, but there’s ample room for trimming and tightening. “The Weight of Nothing” is good and more urgent than its brethren, but it doesn’t contain enough inspiration to cover all its 12-plus minutes. Whacking a few minutes off the closer would be helpful too. Excess padding aside, I can’t say enough about the mixing/mastering courtesy of Greg Chandler of Esoteric. The sound is deep and vibrant with the heavy riffs feeling so damn massive and the drums feeling warm and organic. This thing sounds great as it pushes you toward a psychotic break.
Georgios Schoinianakis handles guitar and drums and does an impressive job with both. His riffing is powerful and punishing, using dissonance as a cudgel. His minimalist melodic flourishes play good cop here, allowing faint rays of light in this vast ocean of darkness and despair. New Ocean of Grief vocalist Nicos Vlachakis delivers a monumental performance with thunderous death roars and growls that feel primal and foundational. He’s used somewhat sparingly but he electrifies the material with his sub-basement doom booming. The saxophonist responsible for so much of the atmosphere and raw emotion is uncredited, which is a damn shame. The playing on “Bereft” is simply awe-inspiring and deserves accolades.1 To the band’s credit, the sax element isn’t overused or made gimmicky. It’s there when needed and packs a punch way above its weight.
Condescending is a highly accomplished debut taking classic funeral doom templates and adding just enough innovation to stand out. It flirts with greatness and great moments are indeed present, but bloat and the occasional underdeveloped idea deprive Föhn of a higher score. Get ears on this and feel the pain of human existence
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hypaethral Records
Websites: bandcamp.com/album/condescending | facebook.com/foehnofficial
Releases Worldwide: August 23rd, 2024
#2024 #35 #Ataraxie #Aug23 #Condescending #DroneMetal #Esoteric #Föhn #FuneralDoom #FuneralDoomMetal #GreekMetal #HypaethralRecords #Review #Reviews #Sigh #Swans
Locusts and Honey – Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed Review
By Dear Hollow
Although professing the inclusion of funeral doom, black metal, and dark ambient, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed is a gentle album. Locusts and Honey gently ebbs and flows along well-defined lines of expectations set by patiently unwinding epics like Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper and Black Boned Angel’s The End in devastating, torturously slow and mammoth riffs, colossal percussion, and vocals from Hell. However, like these albums, there is a core of light, a glimmer of humanity that shines through the vicious and viscous. Locusts and Honey takes inspiration from the well-preserved sacrificial bog bodies of Denmark and Ireland – the macabre – and finds lessons of a life well lived – the light.
UK duo Locusts and Honey is comprised of instrumentalist Tomás Robertson of black metal acts Gergesenes, Nargothrond, and Urne Buriall, and vocalist Stephen Murray of sludge metal quartet Hooden. While influence from black and sludge can be felt, Locusts and Honey blurs the lines between funeral doom and drone in its debut, mountainous dirges pushed to a crackling breaking point, not unlike the noise in BIG|BRAVE’s latest meditation. While rooted in 90s doom styles in Corrupted, Winter, and Esoteric, black metal’s trademark rawness in acts like Darkthrone or Strid offers a scathing overtone to the slow-motion beatdown, depicting cinematic landscapes of dark ambient artists or composers like William Basinski and Henryk Górecki. While Teach Me to Live That I May Dread the Grave As Little As My Bed is far from perfect in its top-heavy design and noisy drone impenetrability, its meditative and melodic qualities make it a promising listen.
It may feel counterintuitive to praise a drone/funeral doom album for its brevity, but Locusts and Honey clocks in just over twenty-eight minutes for their debut.1 Described as one song broken into six movements, the centerpiece is its second “Leathern Cord,” whose mountainous waves greet lamenting melodies that inject a burning tension with a patience that makes its twelve-minute runtime satisfying and evocative. Meanwhile, “Beauty and Atrocity” and “Confraternities of the Cord” embrace peaceful melodies alongside sprawling dense atmospherics, while closer “Damnation of Memoriae” serves as a final look back at the dead in its dark ambient emphasis and diminished chord progression. “Traitor to Love” is the closest to a black metal attack, its dense drone giving a convincing caricature of black metal tremolo picking and blastbeats. Murray’s formidable vocals range from sinister shrieks to hellish growls, shining in “Leathern Cord” and “Traitor to Love,” although the guitar remains the focus throughout. Like any good drone record, Locusts and Honey focuses on utter saturation and poignant evocation, although the effective incorporation of gentle melody is noteworthy.
Although the album is billed as a single song, its movements feel a bit uneven. Although bookended by ambient pieces, Locusts and Honey’s use of “Leathern Cord” as the album climax puts every following track in its shadow. Intro “Surfeit of Lampreys” does a fine albeit brief job of building the suspense, but “Confraternities of the Cord” reiterates its motifs in a slightly more melodic fashion in a significantly shorter runtime – begging the question as to why it’s considered distinct from the main event. While “Beauty and Atrocity” is a better and more honed version of the melodic and “Traitor to Love” maintains its own more blackened identity, each track following “Leathern Cord” never quite lives up. Because of the drone tag, like BIG|BRAVE’s A Chaos of Flowers, the guitar tone that Robertson utilizes is absolutely noisy and inaccessible, and its effectiveness depends on the listener, as it regularly drowns out Murray’s otherwise vicious vocal performance.
Locusts and Honey’s wordsy debut blessedly lets the music do the talking for the dead. Surprisingly more positive than its source material suggests, its dual emphasis on mammoth riffs and tense melody inject more memorable moments than much of contemporary drone/funeral doom offerings. While it remains top-heavy with easy highlight “Leathern Cord” right out of the gates, it nonetheless offers complete and absurdly heavy saturation in ways sure to satisfy. While obscenely devastating and as dark as you expect, Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave as Little as My Bed incorporates melody and gentleness in a concise package that hints at greatness to come.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hypaethral Records
Website: locustsandhoney.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: May 24th, 2024
#2024 #30 #AmbientNoise #BellWitch #BigBrave #BlackBonedAngel #BlackMetal #Corrupted #DarkAmbient #Darkthrone #DroneMetal #Esoteric #FuneralDoomMetal #Gergesenes #HenrykGórecki #Hooden #HypaethralRecords #LocustsAndHoney #May24 #Nargothrond #Noise #Review #Reviews #Strid #TeachMeToLiveThatIDreadTheGraveAsLittleAsMyBed #UKMetal #UrneBuriall #WilliamBasinski #Winter