Band:	Ripis
Album:	Shadow Dies In Morning Light
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	June 2018

01. Burdened By Stone
02. Void
03. Water In The Basin
04. Shadow Dies In Morning Light

The American doom scene is blossoming, as doom metal is one of few places where you are allowed to be miserable. Soon everyone wants to tell their own miserable story of how shitty and awful life truly is. Some miserable people become artists, and in art and music there are tools to tell a story without really telling it. Ripis are a doom band from Austin,Texas; Shadow Dies In Morning Light is their second full-length.

There are some doom bands that, to a varying degree, feel pity for themselves. Life is tragic to them and their artistry builds on feeling sorry for themselves. My guess is that fans of this genre don't feel pity for the artists; they are hardened and have mostly accepted that many things in life are shit. Sure, they listen to their stories, but in the end they probably mostly recognize themselves in the mourning songs. Some bands have an excessive urge to roll around and showcase every bit of their misery, like Woods Of Ypres, and some of bands are of the mellower type, like 40 Watt Sun. Ripis is a band whose misery is more of the mellow kind. This is not a telling album; it's an obscure album that moves slowly to show us pain and misery without being excessive.

The four songs on the album start with the bass or the guitar playing a calm part before the song builds and gets heavier. They are around the 10-minute mark and they are quite repetitive, which makes this quite a thick album for being regular doom. There is minimalism here, but this album isn't about experimenting with minimalism. The album never moves into extreme doom; instead, it uses some of the sounds from more experimental doom bands like Bell Witch. There is a bit of gaze in their dragging sound and both the doomgaze and the dragging, tired, clean, vocals have a bit of a heroin sound to them, which probably is nearer to the sound of some sort of antidepressant. The touch of antidepressant in the vocals makes them sound uninterested, but in a graceful way, and they are one of the best things about this album.

I am not sure what Ripis are telling me here. What happened, why did they get this miserable? Why would someone want to die instead of live? Obscurity is one of the strengths of this album as the listener is free to interpret the album freely. This album actualizes what makes the genre of doom metal so great - it's okay to be miserable. Both the title and Paolo Girardi's artwork fit this album, as this is an album that lights up shadows. Who the person or thing is that is such a thorn in their side that they go on to repeat and repeat and repeat that the person has always been a thorn in their side is probably not that important. The important thing is Ripis's rhetoric; this is an album that will keep the genre of doom and misery alive, well, and happy.