Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration
Between Shadows and Elegance: The Somber Legacy of Death/Doom
Few bands can turn the funeral weight of death/doom metal into something so hypnotic as Hooded Menace. Since their formation in 2007, the Finnish group has built a solid reputation as masters in the art of crafting sepulchral atmospheres, always balancing brutality and melancholy with surgical precision. Over the years, the band has refined its sound, adding layers of melody and sophistication without ever abandoning the scent of the grave that defines its identity. With Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration, their seventh chapter, Hooded Menace reaffirms its place as one of the most consistent and creative forces in the genre. The album is a journey through emotional ruins, where every riff exhumes ancient memories and every melodic passage cracks open a faint light amid the darkness.
A Darkness That Breathes Beauty
Listening to Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration feels like walking through a cemetery bathed in perpetual twilight. The guitars sound monumental, slow, and enveloping, yet there’s an elegance hidden in every note, a sensitivity that turns mourning into art. Hooded Menace remains faithful to its core, but here a stronger sense of refinement emerges: the arrangements are meticulous, transitions flow naturally, and melodic moments flicker like candles trembling in the dark. The balance between heaviness and emotion is remarkable: dense, cavernous riffs intertwine with melodic solos reminiscent of traditional doom, while Harri Kuokkanen’s guttural vocals hover like an ancient spirit above the compositions, amplifying the ritualistic atmosphere of the record. One of the most unexpected moments on the album is 'Save a Prayer', a Duran Duran cover. The band transforms the ‘80s classic into a slow, haunting elegy, sinking its pop melody into layers of distortion and despair. It’s impressive how Hooded Menace preserves the melancholy of the original while reimagining it through its own sepulchral lens as if the song’s romanticism had been buried and resurrected as a ghost.
Production and Atmosphere: The Sound of Refined Desolation
The production is another strong point. Everything in Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration sounds massive and deep, yet never muddled. The bass fills the space like creeping fog, while the drums alternate between slow passages and deliberate strikes that resemble a dying heartbeat. The result is an album that envelops you, not just through sonic force, but through the emotional texture it carries. There’s a clear sense of maturity here. The mix gives each instrument room to breathe, and the way the elements intertwine makes the record sound almost cinematic. The listener doesn’t just hear, they experience the music.
Emotional Weight and Vision Among the Ruins
There’s an almost poetic undercurrent running through this album. Hooded Menace doesn’t treat grief as an end, but as a process of reflection. The songs are long, drawn-out, and full of nuance, true monuments to obscurity, as the title suggests. Yet within all that density, there are moments of clarity, fleeting openings that reveal tragic beauty as if the band wanted to remind us that death, too, can hold art, and that decay can be sublime. What impresses me most is how the album evokes emotion without excess. There’s no rush, no gratuitous display of technique. Every passage feels patient and deliberate, allowing melancholy to spread organically.
A Mark of Maturity
Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration doesn’t reinvent Hooded Menace, nor does it need to. It’s a display of confidence, a work that consolidates everything the band has been perfecting over the years. It’s dark, yet majestic, brutal, yet profoundly human. At a time when extreme metal constantly pushes for technical escalation, Hooded Menace takes the opposite route: they go deeper into their own language. The result is an album that doesn’t scream, it whispers from the abyss, and that makes its impact even stronger. Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration is, at its core, a meditation on endings and the beauty found in accepting them. It shows Hooded Menace at their most mature and self-assured, a monument built in honor of darkness itself, where every stone, every crack, and every shadow has purpose. And when the final chord fades, the silence that follows feels just as powerful as the music that came before.
