My Music Is Better Than Yours: For Funerals To Come, When All Laughter Has Gone...

The genre of 'Doom' Metal is foreign to many people across the globe and it will continue to be after this post. The end! Oh wait, no, I was going to write a blog. It's all coming back to me now...

About 8 years ago I was exposed to a little band out of Halifax called My Dying Bride by a friend of mine named Jesse. The style I saw in the band was both new and familiar at the same time, but it wouldn't be until a few years later when this band really latched on to my jugular and refused to let go. Fast forward to 2004. I knew very little of the band or their legacy and the only material I had heard was 'The Cry Of Mankind' (But really, what My Dying Bride fan doesn't hear that as one of their first songs ?) along with a few scattered tracks from their "Like Gods Of The Sun" album. I enjoyed it, but I was busy with other genres to care too much. In February of 2004, My Dying Bride finally dug their nails into me with the fantastic release of "Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light". I was captivated by songs like 'A Doomed Lover', 'The Blue Lotus', 'Prize Of Beauty', 'Catherine Blake' and 'The Wreckage Of My Flesh'. As the time would approach for me to take part in my year long agony of working a 3rd shift grocery job (Some people can deal with it, but I cannot and never will again!), I became to grow more interested in this foreign genre of 'Doom' Metal and it's numerous subgenres. I basically went after anything I could find that was categorized as 'Doom', even if it turned out to be utter shit.

It was through my diggings that I came across the bleakest genre of them all (Well, in some regards I suppose Dark Ambient could give the genre a run for it's money), 'Funeral Doom' Metal. Although I had a friend who was already into Shape Of Despair, I sought out something darker... something bleaker... something that had no trace of hope or peace. Grim, I know, but this was my goal. Although there are a lot of bands that can be easily overlooked within the subgenre, I did find several bands who I would come to love and hold on a monolithic level (Until Skepticism released that bland affair that was late 2008's "Alloy") for quite some time. Skepticism was the first, followed by Dolorian, Ahab, Despond, The Funeral Orchestra, Woods Of Belial, Wormphlegm, Tyranny, Mournful Congregation & Mistress Of The Dead.

I collected everything I could from these bands, although finding physical copies of a lot of their albums is ridiculously difficult. All the same, I needed to hear more and I did expand, but before long my 'Doom' Metal days began dwindling (Possibly because Summer was approaching and listening to that style of music in 90 degree weather seems to knock the mood and atmosphere out of the picture) and wouldn't fully return for a good period of time to come.

Recently I found myself picking through this and that to listen to and Dolorian's "Voidwards" album popped out at me. It was a cool evening and it was dark and I found myself a bit down, so I put it on my iPod, laid down with my headphones and just laid there. The feeling I got from absorbing the album into me was pure ecstasy and...it's actually really hard to describe it. It was, for one glorious hour, a perfect series of moments. Nothing in the whole world bothered me even in the slightest. There was not a single track on the album that didn't perfectly fit in this moment and not a single track that I didn't fully enjoy.

This pushed me back into my need for absorbing this sort of material, but i'm looking at it from a different perspective (Again, hard to explain, but just keep listening) and a less depressing scenario. This also became the first period of time where I actually listened to Dolorian's other two releases and they're magnificent all the same. It only happens every once in a while, but sometimes digging through piles and piles of underground material does infact bring up the most unbelievable of gems. I could go more in-depth with this genre and my feelings on more bands within it, but for now I will cut this fairly short.

There are lots of genres that I enjoy (Obviously), but there are certain albums within this genre that just....take me to another place. The albums do not seem like they could've actually been created by just some mere mortal. And I know, written in a blog here that seems silly to say, but it is how I feel about a very small percentage of musical creations. Dolorian's "Voidwards" and Skepticism's "Lead And Aether" are amongst this very small grouping, along with stuff like Lustmord's "Zoetrope" (A single person Dark Ambient project from England) and Sunn O)))'s "Black One" (A Drone Metal band out of Seattle, Washington). I will always love my Nu Metal albums, my Industrial Rock albums and my Alternative Rock albums...but these albums...it's just something completely different that I get out of them. But I feel that they would be less special if I could completely explain the feelings I get...so they're safe for now.

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Dolorian - 'Dual - Void - Trident' (From their 2006 release "Voidwards")