Day: October 5, 2022

Respecting the cadence of a full length every two years, starting with his debut Eremozoic in 2018, German musician Eugen Kohl returns with his main project Sinister Downfall after A Dark Shining Light in 2020, an album that had further brought this excellent reality to the attention of funeral doom fans. With this latest The Last Witness, we are not talking about an evolution, as stylistically the differences with the two previous albums are minimal, but rather the ability to offer a work of about an hour’s duration, increasing in length compared to the previous works, totally devoid of smears or interlocutory moments; Kohl’s interpretation of the genre is centred on an enveloping and slowed-down sound, rich in atmosphere and melody: nothing groundbreaking, but simply the best way to exhibit this particular sub-genre by getting all listeners to agree. The sense of sorrow, melancholy and unavoidability in a work like this is evident from the first mournful piano notes, introduced by a mournful peal, of the opener Souls Enslaved, only to cease when the last note of the concluding title track ends; this is what one should always expect from an album of this kind, a sort of quintessence of what funeral doom is in the intention of both those who play it and those who listen to it. Frankly, Sinister Downfall are anything but a surprise for those who had already come across the previous tests and had been able to appreciate the value of a musician like Eugen Kohl, also highlighted outside the doom sphere for what he has done with the recent black metal project Annihilation Rite, managing to keep intact those peculiarities here enhanced by an almost inescapable work like The Last Witness.

2022 – Funere / Weird Truth Productions