Band:	The Howling Void
Album:	The Glow Of A Distant Fire
Style:	Funeral doom metal, Symphonic doom metal
Release date:	April 25, 2025
A review by:	RaduP

01. The Glow Of A Distant Fire
02. Towards A Storm-Cloaked Summit
03. Tat Tvam Asi

In an alternate universe, the Daft Punk song goes like "Lighter, Better, Slower, Mellower".

I didn't have the heart to also revert the "Better" part, so you're left with only 75% of the joke. The last time I covered The Howling Void, I went into detail about why their brand of funeral doom feeling like it sits on the lighter side of the spectrum. I'm usually more of a fan of the kind of funeral doom that either knows when to pick up the pace, or whose soundscapes are so monumentally crushing, so it is surprising why I've always found The Howling Void to be so engaging for what they do. Well, it's a one-man band, so maybe "they" isn't the right pronoun here. I feel compelled to mention that Ryan Wilson's body of work outside this project includes genres as varied as Intestinal Disgorge's goregrind and Executioner Mask's goth rock, to get the biographical part of the review out of the way.

Despite the varied nature of Wilson's body of work, The Howling Void has been very stylistically consistent in its approach of funeral doom. Yes, there were nuances that set each album apart, like some of them being more folky or more symphonic, but the core remained unchanged. The Glow Of A Distant Fire also has its core unchanged. But it also has its nuance that makes it feel like a different album to The Triumph Of Ruin or Into Darkness Ever More Profound. The first and most obvious difference is that this album only has three tracks, making it the one with leanest tracklist other than the Runa EP. But despite that, the album is longer than its four tracked predecessor and many of the previous albums, having all its tracks in the 15-20 minutes range, with its longest beating the record for the longest The Howling Void track since The Womb Beyond The World set it.

That does mean that the sound of The Glow Of A Distant Fire is even more focused on long-form songwriting and slower tempos. Whereas the band has always had a knack for making the lighter side of funeral doom sound grandiose and gorgeous, especially through the use of synths, here the symphonic aspect feels like the main ingredient in giving the sound of this album its nuance, with plenty of pianos and strings making their way into the soundscape alongside the aforementioned synth sounds. Even if the structure of the album makes it even more patience testing, its melodic focus makes the patience you give it feel rewarding, but it also means that its lethargic aspect makes it even more unbearable if immersion isn't achieved.

I'm not sure it would be objectively true to call this the slowest of The Howling Void's albums, but there is something about The Glow Of A Distant Fire that feels superlative aside from just the length of its tracks.