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Illimitable Dolor - Leaden Light review




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Band: Illimitable Dolor
Album: Leaden Light
Release date: March 2019


01. Armed He Brings The Dawn
02. Soil She Bears
03. Horses Pale And Four
04. Leaden Light Her Coils
05. 2.12.14

Illimitable Dolor's second album is a formidable doom offering with heavy-landing melodies that feel like punches right to the sternum.

There is a fine line dividing the slow, gloomy and soulful with the dawdling, lifeless and boring-as-fuck. I often come across releases by bands that use the "funeral doom" pretext only to justify the complete lack of inspiration and the fact that they can play nothing more than 0.2 beats/chords per minute. The kind of bands that you can leave their music playing in the living room, go to the kitchen and fix something to eat, eat it, head to the loo to relieve yourself, go to the corner shop to get cigarettes and booze and then return to the house and the living room having missed absolutely nothing of essence.

Illimitable Dolor is not one of these bands. Their name stands for unending distress and the band more than lives up to it. They came to life by members of The Slow Death, following the sad passing of that band's vocalist, Gregg Williamson, and were formed in his honour. Their self-titled debut of 2017 was Stuart Prickett's tribute to his deceased friend and bandmate and it was in my top extreme doom albums of that year along with Bell Witch's Mirror Reaper and Loss's Horizonless; yes, it was that good. Leaden Light is the record that builds upon its stunning predecessor and establishes Illimitable Dolor as one of the most heart-rending acts of their time.

Loss and grief can be powerful motivators and this band showcases grief-ridden majesty by using mournful and depressing melodic colours in order to paint on their atmospheric death/doom canvas. The gravity of the riffs form a dismal landscape. No clean vocals are heard, just deep and purely sad growls. The forlorn keyboards are appropriate for funeral processions and the morbid tone of the piano evokes memories of deep psychological pain. This is music that needs patience, music that makes you think about your life, your past, present and future; music that is palpable to any person who has ever suffered.

Most funeral doom bands stick to the low end of the pace scale but these Aussies are smart enough to mix up the tempo of their content and, whilst they surely refrain from breaking any speed limits, they do occasionally shift gear. The level of musicianship is up there with the best of the style, providing rich melodies and lush sounsdcapes but, more importantly, what they do exudes real passion and emotion, it feels sincere and heartfelt and personal.

The band releases Leaden Light with three different artworks made for the CD, LP and box set editions exclusively, which is an indication of their high hopes for this album. And they have every reason to be ambitious.

Lovers of melodic, melancholic and funereal atmospheric death/doom, do yourselves a favour and dive right in.

"Sleep well"





Written on 04.04.2019 by Only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud!


Comments

Comments: 3   Visited by: 58 users
04.04.2019 - 07:49
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
You can listen this in wc when you are taking a shit as well. Vocals is interesting those hrunts are calm, not modern dm core thing, more slow and amazing
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Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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04.04.2019 - 09:30
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Damn your funeral doom criticism is spot on
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Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
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04.04.2019 - 13:30
Skyum

Sounds like their guitarist likes Colosseum. The melody in "2.12.14" sounds a lot like the ending part of "Dilapidation and Death" from the last Colosseum album.

I should listen to the whole album though, seems like it's my thing.
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