Oblivion Gate – Wisdom of the Grave (Yay I’m Depressed Now Funeral Doom)

 

How long’s it been since I covered doom of the funeral variety? A quick search reveals it was either two months or two years. Anyway, here’s some more, though Finland’s Oblivion Gate is yet another band I’ve covered this past month that defies a clear definition. “Doom” does not really suffice, nor does “funeral.” A side-project of Matron Thorn, whose work is similarly not easily summarized, Wisdom of the Grave was previously released independently as a digital-only EP, but now with two additional tracks it’s a full-length, though honestly was it an EP at over 30 minutes originally? Either way, let’s stop with this waste-of-space intro and move onto the crux of this review, which is about dragging your mind into a pit from whence it cannot exit. Yay.

   

Oblivion Gate, that name fits. Wisdom of the Grave also fits. All funeral doom drags, it has to, but this is different; a slow descent into abject depression with arthritis that’s worn the joints down to cracked bone. Even mentioning “doom” is a deception here, because it’s an almost constant maelstrom of riff, with substance slowly seeping to the surface to be quickly replaced by another protracted development. And behold the vocals, which swirl like a miasma around the head, never clearly enunciating nor falling into total ruin; they fade and form much like the music as fleeting memories of a dying mind that flash one final time into existence before release. You have to get poetic about shit like this, if you can’t you don’t get it. But if there’s any complaint it’s the production, which has a purposeful, static smokiness that at first it sounds like a mistake rather than calculated, but soon realization sets in and you spiral down into nothing. Yay.

 

Oblivion Gate Official Facebook

Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls

Oblivion Gate – Wisdom of the Grave
ATMF
4.2 / 5