The magic of doom: at the correspondence of each new release the first thought is actually the fear that suddenly nothing is able to amaze me anymore and give me the emotions I seek in this genre, but even this time about thirty seconds of the wonderful I Forgive You are enough to sweep away all doubts. Sweden’s When Nothing Remains are back, a little more than a year after their successful debut As All Torn Asunder , with a new album entitled Thy Dark Serenity that is a very welcome confirmation of the level reached with their previous work. The duo consisting of Peter Laustsen and Jon Sallander, who are joined in the studio by Johan Ericson (Draconian and Doom:VS), possesses the enormous virtue of not getting lost in interlocutory passages aiming instead directly at the listeners’ hearts, by virtue of a songwriting capable of engaging emotionally in every single part of the record. Clearly the death doom of When Nothing Remains is quite unbalanced on the melodic side of the genre, drawing more from the Northern European school (Swallow The Sun) rather than the British school, with its more romantic and decadent traits. Undoubtedly, the alternation between growl and clean vocals gives the album additional depth, allowing the compositions to open more comfortably into atmospheres constantly imbued with pathos and with elegant melodic lines to serve as a common thread. I Forgive You and A Ravens Tale open as best one could ask for an album that, fortunately, still has several arrows to its bow, such as the title track and especially the splendid Like An Angels Funeral, a song that has the only fault of lasting too short. When We Stop Breathing dreamily concludes an album in which, after all, despair gives way to a peace that is not just resignation, and which is well represented by those atmospheres cloaked in dark melancholy that make Thy Dark Serenity a must-listen for lovers of these sounds.

2013 – Solitude Productions