Style: Atmospheric death/doom
Primary Emotions/Themes: Slow deep contemplative passages, darkness vs light
Thoughts: Three songs, nearly 40 minutes of music. With an album that stretches that far with so few songs, it can usually go one of two ways: songs that respect the listener with a huge payoff or songs that meander and overstay their welcome.
I got into Assumption earlier this year with their outstanding sophomore release. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to see what the debut sounded like. While it is not nearly as good as their second album, Absconditus offers a diverse and intriguing take on the death/doom genre.
The songs on this album are long... very long. Two of them are well over 15 minutes, and the third acts as a glue to tie the longer tracks together. The songs are slow and exceptionally deliberate in the way they deliver their message. Liberation takes 3-4 minutes before even getting beyond the initial riff/intro. Only at the 3:55 mark do harsh vocals come in accompanied by a deep distorted riff. To this point in the song a slow clean electric guitar has been playing a sparse melody accompanied by a drum pattern so slow that it would make any funeral doom fan happy.
While it would be easy to pass the album off as funeral doom, the band changes things up often enough to shed that title. The music will morph over time to the point where blast beats are introduced at a few points in the album, only to slow back down to the unbearably slow pace that they started at a few minutes later.
As with the second album the band loves their atmosphere. The vocals have a heavy layered effect with some delay that gives them a larger than life feel. The production, much like the vocals, is vast and spacious, giving the instruments room to breathe and deepen the atmosphere without the use of too many keyboards. When the keyboards are there they are put to excellent use, making their addition a welcome one rather than dominating the sound.
Assumption is a band that I am going to be paying attention to for some time. While Absconditus is not as good as Hadean Tides, it offers a solid slab of doom/death that's heavy on atmosphere. Couple this with their excellent knack to deliver the right riff at the right time the band has the potential to make something truly great in the future.
Written October 2nd 2023
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