After releasing a 2016 demo and a split with Dorre that same year, the Danish sludge/doom band Bethmoora (who took their name from “A Dreamer’s Tales” by Lord Dunsany) recorded a debut album named Thresholds that is now set for release on November 27th by Sludgelord Records, Black Voodoo Records, and Minor Obscure. Lots of words spring to mind in listening to the music — among them, “massive”, “devastating”, “oppressive”, “hopeless”, and “haunting”. It seems to be a no-holds-barred portrayal of desolation, one that sees the ugliness in the world with clear eyes and is capable of reaching apocalyptic levels of emotional intensity.
What we have for you today is a premiere stream of one of the albums four monumental tracks. Entitled “Lamentation“, it’s the song that brings this powerhouse of an album to a devastating conclusion.
It would be a misdirection to call “Lamentation” hypnotic — it’s too downcast and disturbing for that. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, it’s easy to lose track of time despite the song’s extended length. It begins with slow, morbid, brutally distorted chords backed by eerie skittering tones. Even that simple beginning quickly creates an ominous, hopeless mood. But things get massively heavier and more harrowing when the band slowly begin pounding the life out of their listeners and vocalist Anders Kofod roars and screams, with those gruesome chord reverberations continuing to vibrate like Geiger counters in the vicinity of radioactive waste.
Intermittently the pounding accelerates, and the music flares and soars in frightening fashion, but it also drops into near-silence, a silence then nightmarishly filled by miserable strummed chords and hair-raising, throat-splitting shrieks. The music begins to feel like an ax chopping at bone as it gradually grows more crushing and desolate. The vocals wail, bellow, and shriek, themselves creating an atmosphere of soul-splintering horror in the midst of the remorseless beating the rest of the band are administering. At the end, the music casts the listener into a nightmare realm of sound that mounts to a cacophonous zenith, and is then snuffed out.
Thresholds was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Lasse Ballade at Ballade Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it features logo and artwork by Thomas Moisen, with layout and additional artwork by Morten Leerhøy.
Thresholds will be issued on CD and digital via Sludgelord Records and on LP via Sludgelord Records, Minor Obscure, and Black Voodoo Records. The LP is strictly limited to 300 copies, 150 silver and 150 transparent blue with black splatter. Explore the options via the pre-order link below, and then steel yourselves and experience our premiere, as well as a stream of the previously released song “Painted Man“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://thesludgelord.bandcamp.com/album/thresholds
BATHMOORA:
https://www.facebook.com/doomedbethmoora