In the Depths of R'lyeh

This sweeping ballad of funereal excess weaves Lovecraftian threads of misery into the psyche of the attentive listener with a sublime dexterity not commonly found in the genre. The combined effect on the mind of these songs, which are of a fundamentally repetitive and simplistic nature, is deeply mystical. Ecstasy-inducing waves of heavy guitar riffs plod to a backdrop of detached, glacial percussion. The snare resounding in adagio tempo like drops of water falling from a pendent mass of ice onto a cave floor below. The use of reverb works to give the snare a cold, detached quality, which when allied to the overlaid powerchords imbues them with a melancholic poignancy.

The first song, “In the Depths of R'lyeh”, begins with an interplay between strings and percussion. One calls, and the other answers in kind. It is bona fide Lovecraftian horror in its execution. This masterfully-crafted paean to darkness brings to the forefront the startling reality of the feral in Nature. Drawing to its close its coda is a recapitulation of the opening chords, sealing the song. This is the only song that is explicitly Lovecraftian in lyrical content. The rest of the tracks are as such solely in aesthetic, in so far as they readily maintain the atmosphere of hopelessness and fatal resignation.

Some songs, like “Dead Dripping City”, are slower than the first, and more repetitive. They run through about three themes or so throughout their course, changing theme only when the preceding one is fully-developed, which takes minutes to do, and ending in gloriously extended codas of pure, unadulterated doom riffs. “Where No Light Hath Shone... (But for that of the Moon)” is, structurally, a hybrid of “Dead Dripping City” and “At the Edge of the Abyss”, taking elements of the two and compressing them into twelve minutes. Meanwhile, the thematic riff used at the close of “At the Edge of the Abyss” is reintroduced and explicated in “Fallen into Shadow”. I should like to add that the last song, which is also by far the shortest, is actually just the vocalist chanting a single line in repetition to the background of percussion and strings. It has no readily discernable structure as a result, but it is a fitting finale to this ponderous work.

It is a most wonderful thing to behold such a work of constrained aggression, kept in check by such excellent pacing, which serves to draw out the feeling of melancholia, temporally speaking, to critical levels. The mercilessness of these heavy guitars serves to invests the listener in a weighted cloak of sheer misery. The profound beauty of these riffs lies in their uncanny ability to effect upon the mind a lasting gloom.

Ultimately, this is not music for the impatient; nor is it music for those who find doom laborious, slow and unlistenable. This is doom in every sense of the word. It is doom made solely for listeners of doom. It is inaccessible, gelid and plodding, and demands of the listener an inestimable patience. As such, if the listener will critically engage with the material at hand, paying a studied attention to the intricacy of its structure, the sparsity of its overlaying aesthetic, the grandeur of its thematic content, and the way in which these three components intertwine to produce a deeply engrossing experience, he will be most heavily rewarded. Mastered by only a few, In the Depths of R'lyeh is undeniably a triumphant marriage of atmosphere and concept.