This review deals with the German act Doomed, and not the American or, to my concern, the Antarctic one. This act was formed in 2011 in Saxony by Pierre Laube, and in 2012 Doomed satisfied us with two albums, the self-released The Ancient Path, and In My Own Abyss, their debut for Solitude Productions.
Our Ruined Silhouettes, which lasts for about fifty five minutes (for seven tracks that last in between six and nine minutes), opens with When Hope Disappears. It features guest vocals by Pim Blankenstein, whom you might know from Officium Triste, also a very unhappy and un-fast combo. The track starts with an esoteric multiple-voiced chant, a soft-screamingly guitar line, and some church bells -very nice!- before turning, after one minute, into a mostly oppressing and grimly-atmospheric piece of Funeral Doom. For a better part, the quality generally lies in the huge variation, and more specifically in the unique and perfectly executed mixture of hypnotic tremolo leads, the deep-throated grunts, and the slow-paced yet extremely heavy rhythm section. Every excerpt has its own character, with a focus on a total experience, a totality that translates dreamy mindscapes into Aural Art. It’s not by being varying that everything just fits. In Doomed’s case, however, it’s always a (figuratively) shot in the (figuratively) bull’s eye, figuratively seen, of course. Each single minute brings something new that accompanies this aural experience to dimensions beyond light or darkness. And still there’s a coherence, which makes each single composition a majestic journey, and the whole album a majestic² journey. The whole multi-layered experience introduces some of the purest elements from related and (sometimes) equally-blessed genres, like Traditional Old School Doom-Death -you know, the primal scene, without fake catchy electronics of modernist additions- or Black Metal from the most freezing and desolate kind. And to go on… Doomed do not eschew to explore other sonic dimensions by having the whole recording injected by some experimental moments too - though these ones being decently mixed and well-adapted to the whole conceptual approach.
Just for your information: besides Officium Triste’s Pim Blankenstein, also Andreas ‘Deathmonger’ Kaufmann (known from e.g. Charon, Impending Doom, Krypta, Hatespawn a. o.) figures as guest vocalist, on The Last Meal.