Desperandum Gothica is one of the most recent projects among those hatched by the fervid mind of Stijn Van Cauter, as the first full length with this moniker dates back to 2017. III is, as you can easily guess, the third in the series and shows a much more airy and melodic face compared to the various interpretations of doom that the Belgian musician has been offering fans for over twenty years, particularly with his main incarnation, Until Death Overtakes Me, of which the recent excellent Collapse of Light should be mentioned. Here, with Desperandum Gothica we are quite far from that uncompromising funeral doom but, if anything, we find ourselves at the level of sound not far from another project like Gruulvoqh, net of the cosmic component that pervades an excellent work like Dreams Of The Savant, released last year. Although it is not something essential, the hour of music offered in III is definitely pleasant, pervaded as it is by a subtle and melodic sense of melancholy conducted by the keyboards and punctuated rhythmically by a strong guitar riffing; the only drawback of Desperandum Gothica is that, in some way, going to overlap stylistically to Gruulvoqh and Arcane Voidsplitter, the lack of the mentioned cosmic drives gives the whole a certain lightness, for better or for worse depending on the points of view.

2022 – Independent