THE HOWLING VOID - The Triumph of Ruin

The Howling Void – The Triumph of Ruin (2016, Avantgarde Music)

The highly prolific American one man band The Howling Void is back at releasing another funereal doom metal in full seriousness and epic ambition with The Triumph of Ruin.

However, even with epic hunger for his Doom metal, Ryan is on a singular homogenetic concept of clean music and even such a restraint in his vocals that the music seems to form a whole song transported by mood and the sweeping of the violins. At some point, the music is almost more rock than metal. To labelize any music would be to summarize and reduce a produce of labor, love, and passion. But here, there’s an exploration that’s been done and despite the feeling that THV is in a certain underground tangent for Funeral Doom, I think that there is a clear artistic initiative behind this music but there’s obvious not enough distance between the artist and his music.

It is a problem of editing and a cut between the monotonous songs and introduce crispier elements because there is a lot of soft instruments and sweepings. The clean distant vocals are too present and a certain variation in the tone would have been a benefit.

Overall, it is a good entry and there is nothing that would schock but that may also be the problem. It needs something toothier and tougher to keep the attention and the interest. Because we feel that everything might be too clean and it could be interesting to have more doom in here.

6.3