Cryptal Darkness - They Whispered You Had Risen (1999)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:
Cryptal Darkness - Chamber of Gore (1994)

Cryptal Darkness' second LP improves in every way on the band's debut LP, which itself was a complete departure from the death metal of their first demo (linked above) to goth-tinged melodic doom. Quite heavy on the death-tinged melodrama à la My Dying Bride, with elements of keyboard-fueled funeral doom à la Shape of Despair. Love the complex, intertwined guitar leads. And that's an homage to -- not a ripoff of -- "Black Sabbath" midway through "To Blackened Skies I Suffer"........ right?

Track listing:
1. Always, Forever
2. They Whispered You Had Risen
3. To Blackened Skies I Suffer
4. All That Remains
5. Naked She Lay in the Virgin Snow
6. I Bleed
7. Last Embrace
8. A Dream Unremembered

Your blood fills me with ecstasy
Together at last I now know that I can be free

If you're feeling this, try:

While Heaven Wept -
Sorrow of the Angels (1997)

The Fall of Every Season -
Amends (2013)