Band:	Godthrymm
Album:	Reflections
Style:	Epic doom metal
Release date:	February 14, 2020
A review by:	RaduP

01. Monsters Lurk Herein
02. Among The Exalted
03. The Sea As My Grave
04. We Are The Dead
05. The Light Of You
06. The Grand Reclamation
07. Cursed Are The Many
08. Chasmic Sorrows

Sure we have a new My Dying Bride album out today, but we also have two former My Dying Bride members delivering some DÖÖM. Cold, slow and epic as it should be.

Hamish Hamilton Glencross and Shaun Taylor-Steels have both played not only in My Dying Bride, but in Solstice as well, and that is a legacy of doom sounds that lives on in Godthrymm. Joining the two is someone named Sasquatch Bob on bass (and how can you not trust someone with that nickname to put some punch into your music), as well as occasional vocals by Hamish' wife, Catherine Glencross. So the two spouses handle the vocals on the record, but what is surprising is that not only are the vocals one of the best things about this record, but Hamish has never done vocals (other than maybe some backing ones) in any of the bands he played in.

So making his seeming debut as a vocalist, Hamish completely dominates this album, both with the fuzz of his guitar and the imposing tour-de-force that are his vocals. They are something clearly fit for this very dark, very slow, but not necessarily extreme form of doom, but at the same time sounding fairly unique and recognizable, which makes the fact that he never had a role as a vocalist prior pretty hard to believe. The bass and the drums do their job of driving the album forward and making the sound fuller, but they are clearly mostly just supporting the guitars and vocals of Hamish, other than one track in the latter half that strips a lot of the guitars. The sparse female vocals in a few of the songs do add a nice touch as well, but I feel they're a bit too sparsely used.

Reflections sits in a somewhat awkward spot, feeling very much like an early 90s album in sound, in fact it sounds a lot more like a Paradise Lost album than a My Dying Bride one. But there have been nearly three decades of doom development since, in which doom has become much more expansive, fuzzy, crushing, slow, extreme, emotional, progressive, epic, making Reflections at times feel more like a tribute to the sounds of old. But it's so damn good that it's practically soaring even with how little it does. You hear those riffs and those vocals and you really don't need it to be more expansive, fuzzy, whatever. You just hear it, and you feel the love for DÖÖM. I know I do.

I will drop the mic here and leave nik to review the new My Dying Bride, but I'll just remind you that if you like one, you ought to be interested in the other as well, even if they don't sound exactly alike.