Review by Lawrence Stillman on October 27, 2024.

When you hear funeral doom metal, what comes to mind? Is it sadness? Loss? Misanthropy? How about anger? This EP from Sygdom shows that you can create a funeral doom record that eschews all of the usual emotions generated through funeral doom and instead lets the listener feel the anger from the artist (I believe this is a one-man project), which is something that has never been done before.

This is your typical funeral doom record that is similar to bands like Ahab in that it is very slow, heavy, and pulverizing, but the songs are much shorter than your usual funeral doom songs, and they now have black metal shrieks over them. This, in my opinion, was the reason why I now think it conveys anger instead of sadness; the shrieks are full of vitriol behind them, and the lyrics seem to support this notion. The guitars being played at the same time as the shrieks are performed really give the vocals an evil and hateful aura, although that is not always the case.

The instruments here are similar to your usual funeral doom band: extremely slow tempo, guitars and bass that are full of feedback, and the drums are very impactful and crushing now that the slow tempo requires the drums to make every hit count. There are also death growls mixed in the vocals, which is a good contrast to the dual vocal approach done by the sole person behind the band, whose pseudonym we do not yet know. The production is very clean for a self-published EP/demo, just saying the quiet part out loud

Overall, a promising debut from the band. I hope we can see more of them in the future, as this approach to funeral doom is quite refreshing.

Rating: 7 out of 10