Review by Jeger on September 15, 2024.

Rage! Rage against the dying of the light! (*) Why? For so many of us, we get to the point where we just don’t want to be here anymore and no longer want to play life’s twisted games: the catch-22s, the snakes in the grass, and the vicious cycles. So, the pale sun rises with its own bizarre sense of drab over each day and then sets to ominous tones of dread as we settle into night’s sacred misery. But what of those nights of fire? The eves of past when we went not gentle into that good night and the passion of life was like a drug - strung out on diablerie youth - eyes brimming with the promise of tomorrow. Gone… forever… Left with only bitter memories of a life that never was and realistically never could’ve been. Death drawing ever-nearer, ever-faster as we age, and that part of us that just wants to run towards it with the same kind of enthusiasm we once held for life. All light does eventually leave unless you’re one of the dumb happy ones whom I envy so… In 2015, Australia’s Advent Sorrow released As All Light Leaves Her. 

To experience depressive black metal is to venture into where most souls dare not: the agony, the hopelessness and the weight of it like a headstone over your grave, but for us, these looming tones feel like home. On the other side of things do we dwell and I’m a firm believer in the notion that we are not actually depressed; we simply possess the capacity for seeing truth in ways that others cannot, the way things truly are, and it’s a weight indeed. A depressive episode set to music is “As All Light Leaves Her” - wailing in agony on the inside - a look of indifference on our faces and as “With Storming Death” plays, it’s to the excruciating sound of suffocating vocals and maddening soliloquies overlain by an oppressive atmosphere that conjures up visuals of suicide by the rope. The noose awaits this eve, ominously swaying to the night’s autumnal breeze through the backwood canopy and upon your desperate gaze. Spellbound at the thought of what you know you must do… 

It hasn’t always been this way. We’ve experienced joy and it was during those aforementioned salad days of youth; back before the disorders and the addictions manifested into life sentences. Each day welcomed with a literal fucking hard-on. There’s a silver lining to this record as well, this ethereal sort of melody to it that glimmers like fool’s hope for a better tomorrow, but always back into the mires of despair do we find ourselves as tracks like “While Bones Are Broken” unfold - cries resonate through a tortured guitars-dominated backdrop - rebounding into a cacophony of everything that made the Advent Sorrow depressive era so fucking great: frenetic yet masterful compositions, genre-spanning and gripping like cinema. Black metal for fetal position weeping and for hopeless rain-soaked midnights all alone. Boldly absorbing the album’s overbearing energy so as to properly appreciate every underlying melody and every melancholic passage. Like a tragedy being told and what a dramatic vision for an LP. Advent Sorrow really create an immersive experience that hits at both visceral and heart levels. 

“Skin to Suffer In” - once again this brilliant contrast between beauty and pain - soaring now somehow upon wings of lead as lively, almost danceable rhythms drive forward entrancing tremolo passages and into the void of no hope, just beyond all of these striking melodies do we so eagerly venture, because passing never sounded so goddamned sweet. This is why we are passionate about black metal, songs like this one that move us in ways that feel like flight, that feel like weightlessness. Just giving up, just letting it all go now… 

“As All Light Leaves Her” is an album one could write about for hours on end. There are so many layers to peel back and so much underneath to discover. A therapeutic adventure into the realm of perpetual grief where it feels like we just can’t bear anymore, the weight, remember? Until the end, the final two tracks, the aforementioned “Skin to Suffer In” (drooling over this one) and “Absolute Perpetual Death” that illuminate the freedom of surrender and the final release of death. Death so absolute.

We don’t want to go on anymore, it’s too much. Who wants to stick around and suffer every fucking day? But what if I told you that to suffer is the Left Hand way and that only the existential dread of Satan is pure. Now, let us suffer with a deeper understanding of why and excitedly gaze through the Satanic darkness and into the light that awaits on the other side. Face despair and stare down death with “As All Light Leaves Her” - a little more than your conventional depressive black metal record - an enlightenment, an epiphany, why we listen to black metal… Rage against the dying of the light! Or embrace its dimming as we grow a bit wiser and a bit stronger, all the while as the light fades like aging with each passing season of suffering…

 *Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Poem by Dylan Thomas.

Rating: 9 out of 10