Written By Kevin McSweeney
Hooded Menace Lachrymose Monuments Album Review Highlights
Hooded Menace Lachrymose Monuments Album Review: Finnish death-doom masters return with another slab of melodic gloom. Their seventh full-length album, released on October 3rd via Season of Mist. It is their first since The Tritonus Bell rang out mournfully during the dark days of the pandemic in 2021.
Despite the gap, the new album continues in the fashion of its predecessor by moving away from the immense heaviness of their earlier releases, such as their 2008 debut Fulfill The Curse, towards a sound that incorporates elements of traditional metal and goth-tinged melodic doom, whilst still retaining an element of extremity.
It’s full of lengthy and ambitious compositions, and there’s a question as to whether they may have bitten off more than they can chew in terms of their enterprise.
There’s an even more pertinent question in the form of: how would they cope with the departure of former guitarist Teemu Hannonen, and would his absence be to the detriment of the music? The answer? They’ve coped very well, and there is no detrimental effect of which to speak. As for the previous question, let’s go through it track by track to find out.
An album of long songs commences with a prologue lasting just over a minute, opening with a chord on the synths that made me think it was going to be the legendary Pet Shop Boys hit, West End Girls.
Featured this week in both Seven Deadly Songs and Metalhead Horoscopes, Hooded Menace are clearly having a moment and it’s deliciously dark.
TWILIGHT PASSAGES
There will be a 1980s synth-pop classic later on, but it won’t be that one. Thereafter, we have some beautifully atmospheric lead guitar work over haunting keys, both courtesy of Lasse Pyykkö. It whets the appetite perfectly for the carnage that is undoubtedly to unfold.
PALE MASQUERADE
And unfold it most emphatically does with the arrival of Pale Masquerade – a song so good, it made it into our Seven Deadly Songs feature just this past week. The wailing lead and doom-laden riff that kick the song into life remind me of Icon-era Paradise Lost.
This is a point of reference that works well for much of the album, with the blend of death and doom metal being tempered by allusions to classic metal, and much melody ensuing – all of which is highly reminiscent of the English legends circa 1993. The chug of the verse is eminently headbangable, and there’s some little guitar flourishes in there that would not have been out of place on the Blizzard of Ozz.
It’s nice to have these little nods to the classic era amid all the death and doom. I love the fact that they are able to work three separate solos into the middle part of the song, and that they’re all distinct in character, and there’s a dive bomb about six minutes in that is absolutely exquisite. I do love a good dive bomb! (I’m not quite so keen on other forms of bombs.)
PORTRAIT WITHOUT A FACE
I can’t help thinking of Rene Margritte’s The Son of Man at the mention of this song title, even though the man in that painting does have a face; it’s just obscured by a floating apple. Lyrically, I’m not entirely sure what it’s about. Some of the words would seem to suggest something vampiric might be occurring. Take the following for example:
Blood the true consolation
Sucked into the realm of sweet damnation
Exalted unlife
The black wedding of the daughters of dusk
The bride of the crimson nightfall
Succumbed to the dreams desolate
Musically, it’s a brooding, atmospheric number that bears the sort of stately gravitas that makes the music of a band like My Dying Bride so compelling. That said, the fast gallop in the middle evokes the New Wave of British Heavy Metal as much as the violin-augmented passages evoke My Dying Bride.
I should have mentioned earlier that Harri Kuokkanen’s gravel-throated growls are a reassuring constant throughout this recording. Though Nick Holmes moved towards a more conventional vocal style as Paradise Lost’s sound matured, Kuokkanen has not done so. His vocals remain harsh, no matter what kind of turn for the melodic or euphonic or symphonic the music might take.
DAUGHTERS OF LINGERING PAIN
There’s something deeply poignant about this track, despite its heaviness, in the same vein as Metallica’s The Unforgiven or Megadeth’s In My Darkest Hour. Speaking of Metallica, there’s a passage in this song where it breaks down to just bass and drum before the guitars kick back in with an exquisite solo and chug combo.
One could easily imagine James Hetfield instigating a “Hey! Hey! Hey!” chant over it in a live setting. The intro and verse riffs are scintillating, and augmented perfectly by the spectral synths. It’s highly reminiscent of The Ethereal Mirror-era Cathedral, minus Lee Dorrian’s mad vocal style. Lyrically, it’s beautifully poetic. For example:
Envy of death
It’s fragile serenity
Tranquil slumber in the shadows of gods
The sea of darkness
Embrace of velvet tombs
Daughters of lingering pain
Those lines have something of WB Yeats about them, albeit with an edge of macabre darkness more easily attributable to Edgar Allan Poe. They fit the sombre elegance of the music perfectly.
LUGUBRIOUS DANCE
Oh, how I love this title! I looked scornfully upon 2 Unlimited’s Tribal Dance back in the 1990s, and had a mainly ironic appreciation of Safety Dance by Men Without Hats from the decade before, but a lugubrious dance is something I might actually be able to persuade my body to do.
As for the music, well, the fade-in is underused as a technique in music. It’s certainly rare compared to songs fading out, so it’s nice to hear it deployed here. The guitar work is notably impressive and the deep plainsong chants are all very Slow, Deep and Hard-era Type O Negative.
Then they wrongfoot us completely by moving into a shuffled beat with lavish, bluesy riffing that wouldn’t be out of place on a Down or maybe even Pantera album.
Then, after three and a half minutes, they wrongfoot us again by switching to hair metal! (It’s a bit like Pantera in reverse!) The subsequent riff could have come from WASP or Cinderella. Then it changes again, and again, and in truth, it’s difficult to keep up. It’s bold and brave, and there’s some truly excellent parts therein, but it maybe suffers slightly from a lack of focus.
SAVE A PRAYER
Yeah, this is the synth pop staple I was referring to earlier. It’s a cover of the iconic Duran Duran track from 1982. It differs from the new romantic classic in one or two crucial respects.
For example, the snare beats in the verse are switched to the first and third beats of the bar, and the delicate synth riffs are replaced with a persistent palm-muted chug.
Oh, and there’s the small matter of it being just a teeny bit heavier than the Duran Duran version, though it somehow manages to retain the plaintive character of the original. Simon Le Bon was a heart throb to many a starry-eyed teen back in the 1980s, but he might not have set quite so many hearts a-flutter, had his soulful croon been swapped for something akin to Kuokkanen’s ursine growls. Also, is it just me or do those guitar licks in the opening riff sound like Tarzan’s cry?
INTO HAUNTED OBLIVION
This is a colossal beast of a closing track; an immense epic on an album full of such tracks, and the only track as far as I can tell to contain a writing contribution from the departed Teemu Hannonen.
It’s probably the heaviest song on the album, and most akin to their original sound, though it still features some splendid melodic guitar work from Lasse Pyykkö. And it starts with another fade in!
Honestly, you wait for ages for one to show up… Anyway, we have something of a breakdown about a third of the way through, and we have our first clean vocals of the entire affair in the form of a lengthy spoken word section that is immediately followed by a section of death metal that is straight out of the Chuck Schuldiner playbook.
This is then followed by some funereal old-school doom, and we’re still only about two thirds of the way through. It seems a little ponderous, though that’s a minor quibble. It’s still a very good album, but a little bit of discipline would have turned a very good album into a truly great one.
There’s some epic shredding on display from Pyykkö, especially as the song pulls into a section that is strongly reminiscent of Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. (It’s a struggle to keep up!) We close in familiar old-school doom fashion, with the violin back for a brief cameo before we all collapse in a big heap from the sheer exertion of it all!
So, that’s your lot, and I think it’s safe to say that the reduction by 25% in personnel didn’t affect them too adversely. I can’t help thinking that an album of such good songs might have been even better if just a small bit had been trimmed off the running time.
It does feel a little ponderous at times, but the fact remains that these are incredibly good songs. It’s difficult not to be impressed by the virtuoso musicianship of Lasse Pyykkö, backed up ably by the solid drumming of Pekka Koskelo, with the vocals of Harri Kuokkanen providing a continuity of extremity.
It’s a strong, cohesive unit that remains, and their music continues to go from strength to strength. The final words on the matter go to my esteemed colleague Caine Blackthorn, whose statement is one with which I wholeheartedly agree: “Hooded Menace … They slap. End of story. Chef’s Kiss.”
Metal Lair awards Hooded Menace Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration four and a half metal horns.
Tracklist
1. Twilight Passages
2. Pale Masquerade
3. Portrait Without a Face
4. Daughters of Lingering Pain
5. Lugubrious Dance
6. Save a Prayer
7. Into Haunted Oblivion
Order Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration here:
Line-up:
Harri Kuokkanen — Vocals
Lasse Pyykkö — Guitar, Bass, Keyboards
Pekka Koskelo — Drums
Photo by Pasi Nevalaita
