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)

Cryptal Darkness - Chamber of Gore (1994)

Cryptal Darkness' first demo, Chamber of Gore is a slice of old school death metal perfection -- dissonant riffs, lightning speed drums, gutturals, and a few slow blasts thrown in to seal the deal. I'm not sure what happened to them in the next two years, but when they got around to releasing their first LP, they'd fully morphed into a goth-y death/doom band, highly reminiscent of My Dying Bride.

Track listing:
1. Mulched Into Blood and Bone
2. Blood Orgy
3. Disarticulation by Mastication
4. Decomposing Organs
5. Mist Enshrouded Graveyard

Will of the ancients