Angmodnes – Weight of Eternity
What do you do, when the music you created doesn’t fit your band? Right you build a new band. Two members of Apotelesma, Y.S. and M.V., hailing fom Utrecht, Netherlands did exactly this. For their EP Weight Of Eternity they formed Angmodnes.
So, Weight Of Eternity is Angmodnes’ debut release and has been published in September, 2022 via Black Lion Records. This is three songs of Funeral Doom with an overall playing time of about 36 minutes.
Thematically the three songs circle around the notion of immortality and a narrative of someone who is doomed to an infinite conscious existence, while everyone and everything else around them falls to decay and death. It’s a post apocalyptic vision describing the way to the inevitable utter loneliness, with all the pain, sorrow and despair that accompanies the progressing loss until there’s nothing left, but black void.
The EP starts with the title song “Weight of Eternity” and right from here we are thrown into an atmosphere of a somber melancholy with a beautiful, frail piano intro lasting 40 seconds before it gets crushed by the first heavy riff followed by deep growled vocals. Already this contrast is breathtakingly intense. Clean vocals are added, double stroke bass drums fuel the intensity and there we have this feel of cinematic epicness crowned by a perfect ending coming back to the piano.
With “Hollow Earth” the atmosphere gets infused with a glacial despair. Everything is growing even darker and bleaker and there’s a touch of frenzy and insanity to the clean vocals underpinned by additional female vocals. Here a cello intro and later, again, piano are the quiet counterparts of the heaviness, the latter being not entirely soft and soothing, though.
The closing song “Under Darkened Vaults” I’d call the epitome of Funeral Doom. This is so agonizingly slow and heavy and packed with vicious melodies. A perfect dramatic stucture builds a breathtaking dynamic without destroying the dark and sorrowfull atmosphere and brings the song to a closure with a piano ending of nearly two minutes length.
Weight Of Eternity is one good example that you don’t necessarily need many exotic ingredients, to create powerful emotional music, if you know how to compose, arrange and balance the basic ones.
The vocals, both the soaring cleans and the deep growls (and both so beautiful to die for) complement each other as perfectly as they complement the instrumental work. Occasional female vocals add an even more wraithlike feel to the aethereal cleans.
The piano and cello parts convey sheer loneliness in their minimalism, while the epic heaviness bares its depth and vastness that’s expanding progressively and perpetually. The loud and low contrasts here are masterfully placed and played.
With Weight Of Eternity Angmodnes made a stunning debut. Not only that each song comes with a brilliant dramatic structure, but each song is adding more intensity, more heaviness, more dissonance, more harshness , more pain, dispair, sorrow and loneliness. Everything here is right on point. There’s nothing missing, nothing redundant. There’s epic lushness and unobtrusive minimalism. The soundscapes are incredibly dense and intense with a great emotional impact an majestic beauty.