It’s been a brutal year. A lot of darkness has crossed our thresholds, so that even when we make time to celebrate—to embrace life and joy—we can never entirely escape all the reasons to do the opposite. With winter poised to strike and our TV and computer screens continually stained with what look like signs of the apocalypse, it’s a fine time to consider five of 2015’s most wretchedly, painfully slow albums—they don’t even try to put the “fun” in “funeral doom,” and that feels awfully appropriate.
Sunn O))), Kannon (Southern Lord)
The Tomb of All Things by Un
Georgian trio Ennui turn away from the straightforward stomp of death-doom to embrace a European brand of funeral doom, marrying heavy keyboards and chilling atmosphere to their own guttural invocations. The dilated melody of “When Our Light Dies Forever” crawls through the frozen mist on the Tbilisi band’s third full-length, Falsvs Anno Domini; its six songs total an hour and 20 minutes of pure misery and hopelessness.
