The sound of distant death knells lets us know that Burial Choir are back with a new album, to cloak a misty autumn in its descent into winter with their funeral doom, cloaked in inescapable darkness; after appearing in 2016 with their first full length Iconoclast, the duo formed by Mikko Lehto and Mika Havumäki provides continuity to the resumption of activity that took place last year with the excellent The Eucharist of Martyrs. This new Descension of Firmament does not change the coordinates and does not disappoint expectations but, on the contrary, marks the high point of Burial Choir‘s still short history; the three long tracks titled Canto III (which suggest, together with the beautiful cover, references to Dante’s work) unfold in a sort of irresistible crescendo that, starting with the more sullen gait of III-I, begins to open up melodically in III-II to then reach its sublimation in the masterpiece III-III, an episode in which, indulging also in acoustic passages and giving a lacerating guitar work in the finale, Burial Choir touch a peak of poignant melancholy that will not leave indifferent those who love these sounds. This year, every time I have made such a claim, I have been pleasantly proved wrong by a subsequent release, but I am still going to go out on a limb and say that Descension of Firmament is in the upper echelons of an ideal funeral doom album list for 2022, and if the pace Burial Choir have assumed has become that of a full length a year and the inspiration remains so high, we will be able to enjoy it in the future.

2022 – Fallen Temple