You may not have heard of the one-person Belgian death-doom project Gateway before - and to be honest neither had I until a couple of months ago when a pre-order notification from Transcending Obscurity records arrived in my Bandcamp messages folder. This year has been especially strong for this underground Indian extreme metal label, with outstanding releases from Frozen Dawn and Vomitheist already appearing in my list of favourite 2023 releases so far. But with the opening moments of Galgendood, Gateway grabbed me by the ears with its bony dead fingers and refused to let go. There’s no intro track on this album (apparently intro tracks aren't mandatory, who knew!?). Instead, Galgendood opens with a gurgling scream and a thunderous chord as the album opener, The Coexistence of Dismal Entities, sets the album up perfectly. The track builds tension with some slow riffs and deep gutterals before ripping the listener in half, lurching forward with some thundering double bass and some atmospheric guitar leads. This is a cavernous, bludgeoning death-doom alcum that will please people who like their music dead, dripping and evil. If you want an album that sounds a bit like Incantation, but only the slow parts, then you’ve come to the right place! This is the kind of music that makes you howl at the moon while clutching an invisible orange, even though you can’t see the moon because it’s Sunday morning and you’re actually in your parents’ basement, where you live due to a series of poor life choices, at least some of which involve spending all of your disposable income on t-shirts with evil goats on them. But I digress…
Galgendood sounds fantastic - the guitar and bass are depths-of-the-ocean heavy, the drums are really prominent in the mix without sounding overproduced, and the vocals are also right up in the front of the mix. The vocals really are a highlight, staying primarily in the low guttural range of other death-doom artists like Coffins or Incantation, with occasional screams tearing through the gloom.
The album also conjures a really nasty, occult vibe to the album with effective use of chanting and atmospheric interludes - the ending of Dagritueel, with its eerie atmospheric pause before heading into an absolutely devastating finale, is a highlight.
Finally, Galgendood is refreshingly short, at just over 30 minutes in length, which is a real rarity in a genre dominated by long songs and albums. So even as a punishing, slow album, Galgendood leaves you immediately wanting to listen to the whole thing again, so I feel like Gateway’s boldness in going for shorter rather than longer pays off in the end. Highly recommended.
- JIMBO
