Band:	Sinamort
Album:	The Idle Veil
Style:	Death doom metal, Progressive doom metal
Release date:	March 30, 2021
A review by:	RaduP

01. Laumė
02. The Way We Were
03. Maldoror
04. Pantheon
05. In Perpetual State Of Arousal
06. October Swing

To my surprise, this is not only a different band than Sinamore, but also a pretty worthwhile death doom band.

I'm not gonna keep anything hidden. I was contacted by one of the band members asking if I can share some thoughts on the album. Far from the first request of the kind, and it's quite a struggle having to sugar-coat telling someone that their music is just not worthwhile, even if they might have potential for something. I expected I would have to go through the same motions with Sinamort as well. After all, it's a debut from an unsigned band, with no other reviews anywhere else, an easy conclusion to jump to. But I did give it a listen, and for a death doom album of this kind, I found myself surprised more often than not by how much I was enjoying it.

And if I made some time out of my busy schedule to revisit it again, must mean that this is worthwhile at the very least. And I promise this is the last time I'll use this word in the review. Even though Sinamort are only now releasing their debut, with no previous releases like demos and EPs, the band goes back as far back as 2015. Far from ancient, but you can tell that they didn't rush into releasing The Idle Veil, letting it grow until it was ripe. "Ripe" is indeed the best word to use for this. The songwriting, the performances, the production, everything feels like it was worked on until it was the best it could be. At least the best such an underground and underbudgeted band could be. But that only makes it more surprising.

The sound that the band approaches is that gloomy type of death doom, feeling quite close to their Finnish sea-neighbors (Sinamort come from Lithuania, and as far as I remember Kaunas was the capital before Vilnius) in terms of the doom and gloom, but with its own distinct flair to it. And I guess the most important aspect of it is that Sinamort play around with how they structure that sound to never leave a song to work on atmosphere alone. There's always something interesting going on compositionally, moving into pretty progressive territories at times, or putting more accent on the "death" part of death doom, with the violin and keys moving from melodramatic gothic to cinematic post. So it's both familiar and adventurous, which (unless you come up with a completely novel sound) is pretty much the best way to avoid sounding stale.

And it's not like Sinamort ever sound all over the place. The way they play around with the sound never feels forced, and you can tell that they experimented a lot in those six years, and this is all that fell in its right place. Aside from a few vocal moments that perhaps feel a bit too melodramatic, The Idle Veil is an adrenaline shot to the heart of death doom trying to shout in its face "You are not a dead stale sound". And it had me believing it too. Hell, I don't care if it takes another six years to come up with a follow-up as long as it's as well-built as this.



So please don't ask me to review your music unless it's at least half as good as this.