Review: Sullen Guest – Phase

 

Review by Sandre the Giant

Lithuania death/doom band Sullen Guest’s new EP, ‘Phase’, is due out soon and follows hot on the heels of last year’s ‘Chapter III’. ‘Phase’ is a concept piece that follows the five processes of grief, with each track having a specific mood to fit that stage.

Opener ‘Come With Me’ is a doomladen, imperious stride of music, with a powerful deathly roar accompanying it. Propulsive with forward motion, the miserable atmospheres like drenching rain over a tomb. There’s plenty of aggression here but also some nice bleak, slower passages too, particularly the bass led part around 4:30. ‘Voice of the Subconsciousness’ feels like a bona fide classical masterpiece of death/doom; opening with cold clean notes over a crushing granite wall of distortion and primal vocal thunder. Drawing on all the lessons of the genre greats, Sullen Guest carve their own masterpiece of grief right here, rife with gloomy melodic detours. The addition of ghostly female vocals skittering ethereally into the closing ‘Assent’ adds just that little bit of fragility that you need to really capture this sort of music.

‘Phase’ has a lot of positive moments, and coming so close behind ‘Chapter III’ suggests a band that are in a rich vein of songwriting. Let’s hope Sullen Guest continue this and get more music out as soon as possible, because their brand of gloomy yet melodic death/doom is music to my ears at the moment.

https://www.facebook.com/SullenGuest

https://sullenguest.bandcamp.com/