Album Review: Gévaudan – Umbra (Meuse Music Records)

Gévaudan, the four-piece doom band, present their second full-length album ‘Umbra’. A single track and a single concept that sees Gévaudan exploring depression through the eyes of eldritch horror, culminating in an unrelenting shadow that’s imparted on its sufferer. It will be released on October 13th, 2023, via Meuse Music Records.

One single track based around a dark and foreboding concept is an exciting proposition, and Gévaudan have proven with previous releases to be a highly imaginative doom band. Yet, what they have previously done almost pales in comparison to this single-track epic.

Coming in at just over forty-three minutes, Umbra is a startling experience that betrays the normal senses of listening to music. It is an all-encompassing journey, where lyrical content, artwork, and themes help make it as dynamic as it is devastating.

With burgeoning atmosphere and a strong sense that the track could go in any direction, Umbra begins. Touches of other-worldly effects, the guitars sounding like the squeals and howls of something warped, the drums growing in power, and then everything comes together for a colossal combination of deep and dark doom. The perverse aspects of melody and soaring vocals add an even deeper layer as the track evolves further.

Gévaudan have the listener hooked in, and it’s barely ten minutes in.

The darkness continues to spread like tentacles reaching into the mind. Just before the ten-minute mark, a lengthy and exciting guitar solo arrives, and once that drifts away, the vocals reach an even more intense level of passion. It almost seems like an ending, but instead, the tone shifts into something much more melodic. It’s a pretty and peaceful segment and a good chance to take a deep breath as with the track reaching the halfway point, Gévaudan start to build a bit dread. Relinquishing their hold on sanity to let powerful doom wash over the soul.

Drifting through the stars with melodic and emotional highs and lows, Umbra continues to captivate, and as the track reaches the thirty-minute mark it becomes inherently clear that this is one hell of a creative effort.

Creativity that is exceptionally impressive as Gévaudan swell the atmosphere and make the journey feel like it’s coming to an end. The flow, the highs and lows, the beauty and intensity, all leading to a final few minutes of deep and dark doom heaviness. Arguably the hardest and heaviest section of the entire track, it ends as it begun, with a strong sense of the unknown.

Gévaudan – Umbra Track Listing:

1. Umbra

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