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The Best Gothic Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2023





The particular brand of gothic metal that Mourning Moon is a heavier kind of deathrock, a very underutilized goth rock subgenre, bringing them closer to something like Christian Death or Samhain. Namedrops could also include Killing Joke, The Cult, and The Gault, as well as the more heavy metal leaning ones like In Solitude and Unto Others, but basically imagine a glittery kind of alt-tinged heavy metal done with a punk attitude and drenched in a ghoulish production. Jacob Murphy's howls are beguiling, the riffing is both groovy and gloomy, and the songwriting known when to focus on setting a mood and when to just let a good melody be a good melody.

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The quasi-self-titled 8th album of gothic doomsters Hanging Garden feels like a summary of their work to date without conveying stagnation. Everything that fans of the typical Finnish melancholy have known and loved over the past two decades of the band's history can be found on The Garden: a well-balanced blend of dreamy doom, catchy gothic, and melodic death metal. However, new accents are also set. While Hanging Garden's music could be accurately described so far through exclusive comparisons with well-known Scandinavian ( October Tide, Draconian) and domestic ( Swallow The Sun, Ghost Brigade, Insomnium) greats, stronger influences from the English-speaking world can now be discerned as well. Especially Draconian Times-era Paradise Lost are now more frequently cited, and from there, it is not too far a step to the electronic elements of Host and even a brief musical nod to Depeche Mode. Also, one is occasionally reminded of Peter Steele's Type O Negative, and this is thanks to the extensive vocal diversity of the seven Finns, who at no point rely solely on the dynamics of Beauty-and-the-Beast duets. Hanging Garden's three vocalists are capable of covering the entire spectrum from enchanting female singing to male clean vocals, deep growls, and shrieks, which may be the greatest strength of The Garden.

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Hyldr hails from Belgium and is led by the enigmatic Lady IX, who also has written a novel called The Hyldr Chronicles, which Order Of The Mist is based upon. The story is about a young supernatural Japanese girl trapped in a world of deadly Norse mythology and Hyldr is a Valkyrie this girl wishes to become. The morbid lyrics are accompanied by beautiful guitar duets and soaring melodies that are both haunting and melancholic, but at the same time epic and melodic. Order Of The Mist is a tragic yet beautiful album that lingers on in your mind long after the final song has faded out.

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Why is a band whose name translates to “corpse fucker” here in the gothic category? The truth is, Kadaverficker have left their pure deathgrind ways and are now tackling every genre at once. Not only do they have the capability to play sombre gothic lamentations; wicked, lightning-fast grindcore; menacing, lumberous death metal; evil, blackened crust; and fun punk rock anthems; but they also have the songwriting skills to make a thoroughly entertaining and addictive album, despite a total runtime of over 70 minutes. Pick a metal genre, any metal genre. Odds are Kadaverficker are playing it—and they're really damn good at it.

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It's somewhat appropriate that Devil's Blood In Her Tongue came out in the same year in which Nicolas Cage finally fulfilled his dream of playing Dracula in a movie. Though there're fewer gothic castles in Renfield, Maine's Lepra craft Devil's Blood In Her Tongue to have the exact feel of a vampyric castle, in such a way that it's almost "Scooby-Doo chase music". In its most basic form, this is a black metal album, but one where the guitars are completely absent, leaving the bass to do all the distorted heavy lifting, and also filled with ambient and chamber music interludes, and a production that makes you properly feel the cold bloody walls, not to mention the echoed vocals and the bits of goth rock and post-punk in the melodies. What sweet music they make.

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One of the most anticipated releases for 2023 was Saturnus's fifth full-length offering, The Storm Within; after a lengthy 11-year absence, did it reach those high expectations? Obviously it did; this is Saturnus we're talking about, one of the greatest bands in all of gothic doom, whose previous four releases speak for themselves in terms of quality. The Storm Within very much shows what the Danes do best, captivating listeners with their superbly poetic and melancholic songwriting, containing beautifully crafted melodies, proving once again why they're held in such a high regard.

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There is no loss of beauty on Shores Of Null's latest release The Loss Of Beauty; these fine, talented musicians have crafted some of this year's most masterful songwriting in the realm of melancholic gothic doom, taking listeners on an emotive journey of loss, sorrow, and somehow hope. Filled with memorable high-quality tracks beginning-to-end, crafted with beautiful instrumentation and stirring vocals (both clean and harsh), this is a release that any fan of either doom or gothic metal should not miss.

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It took 20 years to get a new Thragedium album. When they finally returned, it was with a masterpiece that could become one of the defining works of Portuguese metal: Lisboa Depois De Morta, a powerful unification of traditional Portuguese music and various schools of doom metal. The acoustic strings and hand percussion blend perfectly with the modern electric instrumentation, as the clean chants and raspy whispers do with the deep growls: as much as it is the initial choice to apply such distinctive nonmetal elements that makes Lisboa Depois De Morta unique, it is also the way in which the electric and acoustic elements intertwine, fading in and out of each other, moving from beautiful folk jams to Saturnian death-doom without ever being obvious. Thragedium have crafted a dense and absorbing album, one whose entrancing, emotional heaviness has brought Thragedium a renaissance as compensation for the fame they should have enjoyed long ago.

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So large has been Tribulation's grasp of all things gothic in metal in the past decade that even a more bite-sized offering from them is enough to make a huge splash. Though it makes some sense why Tribulation would choose to go the EP route here, with this being their first release since the departure of Jonathan Hultén, one of the band's main songwriters, new member Joseph Tholl taking performing and songwriting duties on a smaller step first seems to have given way to great results. Harmatia is slightly darker that the preceding releases, without stepping much outside the gothic/heavy feel but just reintroducing a bit more of the doom/black touches to the sound. And yet it ends with a Blue Öyster Cult cover that sounds like the most fun the band has had on record.

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The weight of remembrance is the very soul of what gothic metal is about: sorrowful laments, memories of past tragedy, the ache of old wounds, the warm yet destructive embrace of nostalgia. Tribunal live up to that title all the way: the weight (it's heavy in demeanor and dimension), the remembrance (sounds a bit like My Dying Bride), and the full thing altogether, as the duo's debut is a remarkably well-polished balance of doom metal's melodic and forbidding sides. If there's one facet that is likely to strike a certain chord and set Tribunal apart, it's Soren Mourne's use of cello, for both atmosphere and melody, but Tribunal's entire sound is balanced and well-shaped, especially for such a new band, blending clean and harsh vocals with hot and cold guitars for a tour of where exactly doom becomes gothic.

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