Profetus

Artist: 
Album Title: 
As All Seasons Die
Release Date: 
Friday, June 13, 2014
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

Hailing from Tampere, Finland, Profetus are a Doom-combo with two full lengths on their name, Coronation Of The Black Sun (2009) and …To Open The Passages In Dusk (2012). And it is within the very same vein that this third full length studio release continues. The band signed to Svart Records in mean time, the fantastic label that is now to release this newest epic.

As All Seasons Die lasts for thirty seven minutes and opens with the introductional song The Rebirth Of Sorrow (3:40). The song is based on desolate, mystic, little divine keyboards / organs and, towards the end, some acoustic guitars at the back ground. But the real aural pleasures start with A Reverie (Midsummer’s Dying) à la …To Open The Passages In Dusk. It’s a minimal, repetitive drudge, a beautifully funereal melancholy with nothing but introvert emotions expressed by ultra-heavy guitar melodies, an even ultra-heavier rhythm section, abyssal grunts and asphyxiating keyboard lines. This is the kind of Funeral Doom you might know from several of Stijn van Cauter’s projects, but also the likes of Thergothon, Skepticism, Evoken, Ahab, Mournful Congregation or Comatose Vigil do come to mind. The whole album is filled with an intrinsic desperation and atmospheres so melancholic and oppressive, but oh so fine. It sounds so depressed / depressive / depressing that it gives me a warm mood… Listen to the long-stretched lead in Dead Are Our Leaves Of Autumn (despite the lack of blackish elements whatsoever, it’s a purest definition of the Blackgaze-trend, but executed with a mostly grieving joy-and-happiness antithesis)…

91/100