18k Anti Anti (doom Edition)

Fourth studio album from Sweden's Avatarium. The band have no musical boundaries and that plays a vital part in ensuring they have a signature sound. This open-minded, yet doom-laden collective draws elements of folk, jazz and psychedelic brilliance into a grandiose amalgamation that manages to maintain an almost pop-like elegance. Founded in 2013 by Candlemass mastermind Leif Edling, Sweden's Avatarium specialize in ultra-heavy and epically dark doom metal with a classic rock twist that invokes names like My Dying Bride, Black Sabbath, Cathedral, Rainbow, Entombed, and Blue Öyster Cult.

Hail to the masters of funeral doom! One of the genre’s pioneering bands, Norway’s Funeral were formed in the mists of the early 90s with an apt name to match their distinct style: morbid keyboard melodies, plodding death stalking riffs and melancholic choral harmonies all superbly mix to create an unbelievably sombre atmosphere on songs like ‘From The Orchestral Grave’, ‘Making The World My Tomb’ and ‘Song Of The Knell’. With each song clocking in around 10 mins a piece “Oratorium” really does feel like attending a funeral in every sense – not in the least when you consider how many guys in the band have died since its formation!

Well, this is more like it! Swedish stoner rock trio Grand Magus did themselves few favors with their solid but unspectacular 2002 debut, which quietly sank into the general morass afflicting the doom/stoner movement at the time. And when guitarist and singer JB subsequently hooked up with Michael Amott's high-flying Spiritual Beggars, it looked as if Grand Magus were doomed (no pun intended) to vanish altogether, leaving only that one middling release to their name…

Beauty and darkness, heavy guitars and fragile ballads, vintage blues rock and modern doom - the sound of Stockholm's AVATARIUM is so unique, that the band already succeeded in drawing the world into their mystical spell with their very first album. The Swedes take you by the hand and lead you down into their mesmerizing and gloomy world full of absurd poetry and bittersweet melancholy with a raw sixties flair. Although the band was only founded in 2012 by SOEN guitarist Marcus Jidell and CANDLEMASS chef Leif Edling, they were already able to top the soundchecks of the most prestigious European magazines and draw all eyes upon them with their two albums and EP's. Now Hurricanes And Halos is the outstanding successor to the critically-acclaimed The Girl With The Raven Mask…

Although the band Anathema has since gone down a much more atmospheric and melodic route with their music, it's important to note that the group began as one of the pioneers of death doom metal, a style of music similar in its melancholic feeling to what Anathema has done more recently, but much heavier and darker in the one it is executed. With a few demos and this debut 'Serenades', Anathema would be setting the groundwork for a style that has since become much more popular by the likes of bands like Swallow the Sun. Although 'Serenades' is a classic work for its development in that doom metal sound, it is an incredibly hit-or-miss ordeal throughout, and may be better appreciated for its place in history than as a listening experience of its own.

Medusa is the forthcoming fifteenth studio album from Yorkshire doom metal band Paradise Lost. It's due for release on 1 September 2017, via Nuclear Blast records. Guitarist Greg Mackintosh said of the record: "The new album will be slower, sludgier and more doom-filled than ever before". He adds that it will be "eight riff-laden monster tracks of sheer Northern misery". It will be the first album with new drummer Waltteri Väyrynen, who took over from Adrian Erlandsson after the release of The Plague Within in 2015.

Doom legends Paradise Lost continue to churn out albums of high quality and The Plague Within delivers the goods. They meld their signature Doom Metal with their more angry, Death Metal stylings. They open the album with the very melodic "No Hope In Sight" and follow it up with a much more aggressive cut "Terminal". The album definitely gets more and more old school as it goes along integrating guttural vocals to the aggression. Other highlights include "Punishment Through Time", the blistering "Flesh From Bone" and "Cry Out". Another solid album from the prolific Paradise Lost.