The iconic French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy is alleged to have once stated the phrase ‘music is the space between notes’. It is my understanding that Debussy was referring to the moments of quiet contemplation between the emotional impact that we seek out as music listeners. The fleeting moments between audible vibrations are when our minds have a chance to reflect on the mood and the intent of the music that we are listening to. Funeral Doom is a sub-sub genre of extreme Metal which greatly espouses these Debussyian ideas. It is a style of music that inhabits a particularly distinct and unique space within the many manifestations of Metal music extremity. As often as it demonstrates a sense of gargantuan size and calamitous heft, Funeral Doom can subject the listener to powerful, often mournful emotions that are just as tear-jerkingly pungent as the music is insanely, trailblazingly heavy.
Hailing from the US west coast city of Sacramento, Oromet is the Funeral Doom outfit of drummer/bassist/keyboardist Patrick Hills and guitarist/vocalist Dan Aguilar. Having released their debut self-titled full-length in 2023, a three-track affair featuring an opening twenty-minute epic followed by another two tracks of roughly 10 minutes runtime each, Oromet successfully introduced themselves onto the funereal stage with their celestial and tectonic plate shifting range of bittersweet heft. It was a beautiful album that seemed as if it pulled from the imaginations of both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The grandiose pieces of the album echoed cataclysmic fantasy events of empires falling, armies clashing, mountains moving, and realms lost. This new album entitled ‘The Sinking Isle’ picks up from the vast lucid dream state of its predecessor and serves to prove that Oromet is a duo whose musical talents can stand toe to toe with their lofty ambitions and vivid imaginings.
‘The Sinking Isle’ follows the same album structure as its predecessor with an opening epic that spans the initial twenty-one minutes of the record and is followed by two more tracks that are shorter in length, albeit still being over ten minutes each. The album artwork itself is a very accurate representation of the sound and emotional palette of the experience. In the distance of the image a volcano erupts, sending a towering pillar of fire upwards towards a smoky sky whilst the cliffs below begin to crumble and large boulders fall into the sea below. In the foreground, an armada of longships sails away from the geological destruction amidst the whipping winds of a chaotic sea. This all sounds quite violent, yes, but notice how an unobstructed sun peers through a gap in the sky, unobstructed by the black smoke, and the sky expresses different shades of blue. This is music that, in spite of presenting the listener with a sense of massive warring calamity, is also permeated by a constant sense of hope: a ray of light in an otherwise haunting universe.
The opening track ‘Hollow Dominion’ awakens to soothing acoustic strings and the sounds of a gentle wind. This calming announcement is disturbed at the two and a half minute mark by the sustained electric guitar notes and bass that signal the beginning of the heavier sections of the album’s mood. The enormous sounding drums are joined by a slow, deep and otherworldly vocal performance. The track spends the next ten or so minutes building towards a triumphant-sounding lead guitar melody whilst the drums introduce swinging fills that sound unusually brisk for this style of music. The unorthodox nature of the drums here actually adds a great sense of depth and a marching intent to the hulking mix. During the final third of the track, the guitars and bass enter a woeful progression that feels faintly similar to the central melodic theme of Bell Witch’s modern Funeral Doom masterwork ‘Mirror Reaper’. The closing moments of ‘Hollow Dominion’ make for a great final crescendo.
Track two ‘Marathon’ begins with a more immediately doomy tone. This track shows the album at its most perilously dark; the hopeful nature of the previous track is still present, however, on this song it is more concealed behind the ritualistic power of the drums and vocals. The middle section of the track takes a moment to petrify the intensity of the music in a break of quiet echoed stillness. Acoustic guitars gradually herald the heft of electronic instrumentation back into the fold for a later progression that has a near refrain level feel to its subtle repetitions. The final track ‘Forsaken Tarn’ resumes the journey with a similarly gloomy tone. This soon transitions into an interlude of cleaner guitar notes that quickly evolve into a righteous-sounding distorted lead guitar medley. It’s around this point where the chord progression enters a dramatic shift. The moment is akin to ‘delayed reinforcements entering a battlefield at the final second to finally save you and overwhelm a powerful foe’. The promise and the hope that the music had once offered have returned. The remainder of the closing track gloriously indulges in this audible salvation.
‘The Sinking Isle’ is a truly beautiful Funeral Doom record. Whilst the vocals and guitars don’t always stray far from the modern melodic connotations of this genre, they’re still great. The bass playing is powerful and seismic, and Patrick Hills incorporates some very interesting percussive ideas to add an extra layer of intrigue to this album. Oromet has reinstated their desire to create Funeral Doom that is simultaneously gripping, epic, utterly gorgeous and highly emotional. There is a soothing and healing nature to the sound of the album that feels distinctly Oromet. I’d recommend this to fans of Mournful Congregation, Ahab, and of course Bell Witch.
