Before we get ahead of ourselves, Stygian Bough: Volume II is less than three minutes short of the hour mark, with all four of its songs being in the 10-20 minutes range. It's only about seven minutes shorter than its Volume I counterpart, though it is interesting to see Bell Witch go beneath that runtime threshold, even if missing it by a margin, considering that its predecessor had a single 83 minutes long track (and sadly nobody laughed when I shouted "one more song" after they finished playing it when I saw them live).
Runtime talk aside, this felt like a very necessary album, even if only because the previous time Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin collaborated in a full album collaboration capacity, they pretty much telegraphed the need for a sequel by naming it Stygian Bough: Volume I. That was an album I kept comparing to Mirror Reaper, not only because it was its direct follow-up, but also because Mirror Reaper had been the Bell Witch album that had the most contributions from Aerial Ruin's Erik Moggridge, so the collaboration felt like a natural continuation of that sound. That's a constraint I no longer have with Volume II, mostly because Mirror Reaper is now nearly a decade removed and because we already know how the two forces sound like when collaborating in this capacity.
The first thing to note is that the cover art seems a bit out of place for Bell Witch, who have so far went for a very expressive surrealist style, whether that was one that evoked Beksiński or Bosch, with Mirror Reaper's in particular being the likely reason why the late Mariusz Lewandowski (R.I.P.) became so beloved in the metal world. Here the Denis Forkas Kostromitin evokes something more akin to a vitriolic cavernous extreme metal (it instantly reminded me of Endless Wound, and sure enough: same artist) that isn't really in line with the very morose, patient, and melancholic vibe that's contained here, but I appreciate the constant shift of styles, even if I wish that aestethic similarity to faster extreme metal was also reflected in the music.
The way the two artists merged their forces the first time around did feel like a collaborative effort rather than merely Erik singing over funeral doom metal, with it often leading to moments sounding more like Aerial Ruin. This time around, ironically, the doom side of the sound is much greater, but the album as a whole gels better, making the "Erik singing over funeral doom metal" feel like less of a regressive concept, because the mellower parts of it feel better integrated in the sound rather than having a folkier side contrasting with the heavier doom side. You'd think that Erik's distinct style getting absorbed in the larger doom sound would be a downside, but instead it makes it feel more organically expansive in palette in a way that the band's duo nature or Erik's solo project nature wouldn't be able to on their own.
Erik's vocals, despite being somewhat fragile and subdued, are a perfect fit for a morose doom sound where one of the emotions it elicits is spiritual exhaustion. With Jesse's harsh vocals taking a very strong back seat here, it's quite interesting to hear doom of this magnitude performed with this kind of folky clean vocals, something I've grown to appreciate even more after diving into a lot of 60s folk, and the acoustic guitar moments in the intro of "From Dominion" perfectly capture how well that style gels emotionally with doom metal. Even aside from folkier tendencies and acoustic guitars, the electric guitar touches, whether in the riffing or in solos like the one on "King Of The Wood" do have a touch of more traditional forms of (death-)doom due to the newfound band-like structure, making some of the soaring guitars feel like highlights.
Volume II doesn't necessarily telegraph a follow-up the same way that its predecessor did, but it did make me more excited for a follow-up than how excited I was for it.
