The return of Ryan Wilson and his solo project The Howling Void with Into Darkness Ever More Profound is one of the best news possible for fans of atmospheric funeral doom. Four years after Bleak and Everlasting, the Texan musician once again brings out, with this eighth full length, his more melodic and poignant nature, rediscovered in his previous work after a central phase of his discography in which he allowed himself a few variations on the theme, which were in any case far from being despicable. The fact is that few people like Ryan know how to touch the right emotional chords without being cloying, combining airy keyboard openings with a load of melancholy evoked by the poignant guitar work that translates into a comfortable cathartic effect, equivalent to finding oneself warm in one’s bed when the temperatures outside are cold and even life does not flow exactly as one would have wished. Over the course of four tracks for about forty-five minutes of development, the album maintains a constant and sorrowful pace that is never diluted or rippled by digressions, with the sparse and cadenced drum beats marking step by step the arrival at that ever-deepening and inescapable darkness evoked by the title. Wilson’s compositional sensibility is a guarantee of success for operations of this kind that, if manipulated by others, could be a harbinger of more than one contraindication: Into Darkness Ever More Profound moves and envelops, leading the listener to a suffused pain that is never excruciating or dripping with despair (Impenetrable Gloom), a state of mind of conscious elaboration of an irreversible path towards a destination (The End of Endings), as unknown as the knowledge of where, how and when one will land there.

2023 – Funere