“This record moves with the bleak grace of doom metal, waxing and waning with the patience and confidence of something that already knows it will outlast you.”
There is an impressive audacity in a doom metal band from Kampala, Uganda, naming their album Immortalizing the Lugubrious, or Those Of Evolving Despair. But this is nothing new if we’re talking about Vale Of Amonition, a band that approaches the nomenclature of its releases with florid excess, going back to its first release, Those of Tartarean Ancestry, which features songs like Of a Painting Grim (The Apostle Gray and the Harvest Black). So this album title does not strike me as surprising. I expect nothing less from Vale Of Amonition.
Remaining true to the genre they dabble in, the record opens with Where They Gathered and Suffered, a nine-minute track that maintains a pounding trudge, carried by heavy guitars and drums that move with slow, menacing stealth and the flare of a midnight mass. Sons Of The Moribund trots into a slight gallop as the album builds momentum, with harder guitar chugs and rawer growls that carry some aggression while maintaining the bleak sensibilities of doom metal.
On this record, the band have maintained relatively long compositions, as seen on previous releases, allowing the music to breathe and build a detailed doom architecture that evolves and ends not in resignation, but with intention. The closer, At Evolution’s End, incorporates black metal influences, a line the band have straddled on previous releases. The production remains tastefully minimalist, as expected of Vale Of Amonition, leaving the compositions to carry their own weight.
Immortalizing the Lugubrious, or Those Of Evolving Despair is a solid record that continues the promising trajectory Vale Of Amonition have charted over the years. This record moves with the bleak grace of doom metal, waxing and waning with the patience and confidence of something that already knows it will outlast you.
