Style: progressive death metal, doom metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Blood Incantation, Tomb Mold, Esoteric
Country: New York, United States
Release date: 30 May 2025

When I was fourteen—ready to start high school baseball and with aspirations of playing beyond—I totaled my shoulder: my growth plate separated and fractured (colloquially known as Little League shoulder), and I had recurrent biceps tendinitis during recovery. Years of physical therapy didn’t fully fix it, so my baseball career was over just as it was going to truly begin. Seven years ago, while recording Weeping Sore’s debut False Confession, guitarist and vocalist Doug Moore seriously injured his shoulder, leaving him unable to play guitar. Many of his frustrations and pains are easy for me to empathize with, but some of what Moore was feeling I can only imagine. Planning on going to law school after his graduation from an Ivy league, Moore veered paths to become a full time death metal vocalist and guitarist (for Pyrrhon, Seputus, recently Scarcity). Famously a tenuous, financially risky career, pursuing music couldn’t have been an easy choice for Moore. Thus, by losing out on a fundamental asset to his livelihood and passion—the ability to play guitar—Moore’s late nights of shoulder pain must have been filled with potential regrets along with the typical pesky discouragements of recovery. 

Born of six years of work and bestowed with a fitting title, The Convalescence Agonies is Moore’s triumphant yet deliberate return to guitar playing and a sonic diary of his recovery of sorts, written during the excruciating reunion with his guitar. Doom-y riffs lurch forward in tumultuous, lumpy strides, utilizing both shimmering, bright tones (“Empty Vessel Hymn”) and tasteful amplifier feedback (“Pleading for the Scythe”) in equal measure for that sweet juxtaposition between heartaching beauty and pain. Despite the extended time away from his instrument, Moore’s guitar playing would have you believe it’s an extension of his body on The Convalescence Agonies. The mixing and mastering from Chris Grigg and Greg Chandler capture the earthiness of Moore’s guitar tones while the lead guitars absolutely sing when they appear—there is a guitar lead in “Sprawl in the City of Sorrow” that somehow feels as vibrant as a trumpet during the best climax on the album, and the main riff of “Empty Vessel Hymn” is a gilded swing with the most succulent guitar tone on a doom metal record since Worm’s half of the Starpath split. I even hear hints of Schuldiner in Moore’s playing on The Convalescence Agonies.

Delivered through a mix of septic, cavernous gurgles and acerbically vitriolic shrieks, Moore’s imagery in the record’s lyrics—long one of his strongest attributes as a musician and band leader—details chronic pain, as well as the physical and mental transformations that go along with it. Fading in and out of metaphor and bitter dysphemism, Moore gets his point across clearly yet artfully. Together with Steve Schwegler’s drumming, the vocals on The Convalescence Agonies ground the record and help the record effortlessly transition between doom metal to death metal. Swirling and blasty drums and piercing highs announce the arrival of death metal sections like clockwork, with cascading pounding on the drums and vocals from the nadir of Moore’s extensive range heralding the decadently heavy doom metal. 

With a dramatic flair, Weeping Sores incorporate Annie Blythe’s cello into several tracks, adding luxurious texture to the songs. The epic title track features my favorite moment on the record as Blythe imposes herself atop a blackened storm of tremolos, the effect similar to Ne Obliviscaris sans clean vocals. In addition to Blythe’s contributions, Brendon Randall-Myers (Scarcity) guests on nearly every track as a keyboard player for Weeping Sores; his spooky tones contribute to a haunting atmosphere reminiscent of Bedsore’s Dreaming the Strife for Love in their retro progginess. Randall-Myers’ playing is understated, relegated to the background, but it’s essential to The Convalescence Agonies’ atmosphere and mood—he’s sorely missed on “Sprawl in the City of Love,” the lone track without his feature. In fact, the weakest aspect of The Convalescence Agonies is when Weeping Sores plays into unembellished death/doom for extended periods of time. The proggy gothiness from the keys, cellos, and lead solos clandestinely makes itself an indispensable quality for the record.

The Convalescence Agonies is a record of passion. The suffering that inspired it and persisted throughout the writing and recording process is embedded in the album’s DNA. The songs are dark and moody. Yet, an air of triumph overrides the negativity by the LP’s end with the title track’s bombastic symphonic black metal midsection and climax before slinking back down into moody keyboards. Moore pours his heart into this record as he perseveres through chronic pain, and even without regaining full use of his shoulder yet, he has crafted an instant death/doom classic.

Recommended tracks: Empty Vessel Hymn, Sprawl in the City of Sorrow, The Convalescence Agonies
You may also like: Pyrrhon, Dream Unending & Worm, Civerous, Kayo Dot, Seputus, Bedsore, Felgrave, Scarcity
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: I, Voidhanger Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Weeping Sores is:
– Doug Moore – guitar, bass, vocals
– Steve Schwegler – drums
With guests:
– Annie Blythe – cello (tracks 1, 3, 5)
– Brendon Randall-Myers – keyboards (tracks 1, 2, 4, 5)
– Lev Sloujitel – prepared banjo (track 2)
– Pete Lloyd – additional guitars (track 3)

The post Review: Weeping Sores – The Convalescence Agonies appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: doom metal, progressive metal, progressive death metal, dissonant death metal, avant-garde black metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Tomb Mold, The Ruins of Beverast, Mournful Congregation, Ahab
Country: Norway
Release date: 25 April 2025

In the beginning was the Doom, and the Doom was with Metal, and the Doom was Metal. You all know the story: fifty-five years ago, metal was brought into existence in Birmingham by Black Sabbath. Taking psychedelic blues to previously unknown levels of distorted heaviness, the Brits’ style revolutionized rock and became the archetype of doom metal to come—slow, heavy, evil. And in the depths doom has stayed for half a century, content to drag down the stray thrash or death metal fan who seeks something even more punishing. Doom is the Charbydis of metal, and once you’ve been sucked into her grasp, escaping the sonic mass is near impossible. 

Felgrave, a one man Norwegian death/doom band, has returned after a long five years with his newest album Otherlike Darknesses, a hulking album of three beastly tracks—two eighteen-minuters and a twelver. I was ready to be painstakingly slowly crushed by the force of the tracks, have them extinguish any sense of hope or purpose like Spiine did last month. However, while at its core a doom metal record, Otherlike Darknesses claws its way upwards from the abyss and towards the stars, fighting against its own colossal weight all the way. “Winds Batter My Keep” starts by basking in grimy vulgarity like generations of doom bands have before, the riffs oozing forward like pitch. A few minutes later, the dirging doom pace speeds up to a death/doom clip, and Felgrave introduces the predominant riff style for the album: dissonant, entangled guitar lines. Their contorted bickering is a hideous aural spectacle but gripping, nonetheless. Alas, once you’ve accepted your fate of an aural beatdown, from within the distortion, an atmospheric synth creates room in the soundscape for M.L Jupe’s dramatic, heartfelt clean vocals to break through the murk. They’re a recurrent guide through Otherlike Darknesses, a beacon to follow once you get lost in the depths—which you will.

Moreover, while the guitar parts are horrifically dissonant at times—swaths of “Winds Batter My Keep” and “Pale Flowers Under an Empty Sky” get close to the style of playing my Subway peers refer to as “car alarm metal”—they coalesce into melodic leads at others. Rewarding, indeed. The guitars climb ever upwards in complicated, twisting scales not unlike Thantifaxath or SkyThala, with rich tones reminiscent of funeral doom icons Mournful Congregation. When the maelstromic blackened trems break out, the riffs are transformed in a moment to dreamlike abstractions. The dynamic drumming courtesy of Robin Stone provides a dramatic levity to the sound, as well, liberating the death/doom from itself. 

The songwriting, too, is dreamlike—unpredictably stream of consciousness. There are rare reprisals, like the middle section and ominous ending of “Winds Batter My Keep,” but otherwise Otherlike Darknesses is wonderfully amorphous, the songwriting always imaginative and natural. Fans of face-scrunching riffs and cerebral dreaminess alike will be satisfied. Each track is a full saga, spanning the gamut from Warforged nightmarishness to Dessiderium-esque serenity.  

Otherlike Darknesses’ desperate climb into the heavens would carry significantly less impact were it not for Brendan Sloan’s (Convulsing, Altars) magic dissodeath fingers working the production. The bass is as equally important to Otherlike Darknesses as the wicked guitars, its vibrant, full-bodied tone another speck of brightness when the metal is at its heaviest—but the bass is also the heavy grounding when the clean vocals hog the foreground. The hazy atmosphere from the synths in “Winds Batter My Keep,” the Morningrise and Orchid inspired bits in “Pale Flowers Under an Empty Sky,” the spacious, all-enveloping chords of “Otherlike Darknesses,” the spine-crushingly heavy riffs everywhere… there is no detail in Otherlike Darknesses which doesn’t sound natural, beautiful, yet twisted.  

This is the most ambitious album I’ve heard from a one-man project since, well, Keys to the Palace by Dessiderium earlier this year, but it’s damn ambitious, and M. L. Jupe nails the takeoff and landing. I’ve never heard a doom record quite like this, lifting me from Tartarus to the heavens and back down. Maintaining sharp focus through such gargantuan, meandering tracks requires the mastery of harmony and dissonance that Jupe possesses. Breaking free from the chains of its genre to land in another plane of existence, Otherlike Darknesses is surreal doom metal far removed from metal’s roots but at the same time tethered to them.

Recommended tracks: Winds Batter My Keep
You may also like: Worm, Panegyrist, Chthe’Ilist, Dream Unending, Qrixkuor, Warforged, Dessiderium
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page

Label: Transcending Obscurity Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Felgrave is:
Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards and programming by M. L. Jupe

Drums by Robin Stone (Evilyn, Norse)

The post Review: Felgrave – Otherlike Darknesses appeared first on The Progressive Subway.