As unseasonably warm as this month has been, Halloween is just around the corner and it's high time for some doom and gloom. I'm putting especially heavy emphasis on "gloom" today thanks to the new song we're about to share with you below. The highly active Atriarch returns with their third LP in as many years with An Unending Pathway, their latest and their debut for Relapse Records. On this new record, the Portland quartet harness the crippling power of doom and hold it tight in death's cold embrace, leaning hard towards moody gothic horror and injecting spare moments of black metal possession and glimmers of psychedelia. There's a lurching, ritualistic feel to the proceedings, and a dire hopelessness in the vocals that doesn't let up for a moment. It's death rock that OD's on death. Knob-twiddler extraordinaire Billy Anderson has his feather-light fingertips all over this one, coaxing each element into its full potential even as he weaves it all together into a thoroughly crushing force. The end result is as dark and eerily atmospheric as an abandoned graveyard at midnight.An Unending Pathway is out via Relapse Records on October 28, 2014. Stream "Bereavement" for the first time below.
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