The 2018 released album ‘Absconditus’ from the Italian Doom/Death Metal band Assumption was described by a VM-Underground colleague as Doom/Death effort that has a lot to offer and compared it to bands like diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter and Hooded Menace. That’s quite a party to be in! That meant that the expectations were high for their sophomore album, ‘Hadean Tides’, which appeared earlier last year, again through both the Everlasting Spew Records and Sentient Ruin Laboratories labels.
The comparisons with the three aforementioned bands, diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter and Hooded Menace are quite apt. It has that challenging depths of the first, the pace of the second and the meaty tempo changes of the third. But I would definitely add Evoken to that same selection of referenced bands, the open chords and single tone picking is very reminiscent to Evoken around their ‘Caress Of The Void’-era. Take a listen to ‘Daughters Of The Lotus’ and the Evoken comparison comes right to you. But it is by no means a disqualification, as true mind-bending and chasm-gazing Funeral Doom(-like) metal is really rare these days of modernity, in which Doom Metal is more about Sludge and ‘caverncore’. Of course, Autopsy’s ‘Mental Funeral’ is a haunting piece of dragging Death Metal, but it has not all that much to do with the ‘real’ darkness that bands like Evoken or Tyranny are providing on their genre-defining records. In short, Assumption is serving us with some of the best Doom/Death Metal (or Funeral Doom, if you prefer) in recent times. Truly recommended for those who love to do some chasm gazing…
