Worship Metal Album Of The Week – Godthrymm – Reflections

Godthrymm is the brainchild of ex-My Dying Bride/ Vallenfyre / Solstice axesmith Hamish Glencross and also features the drumming skills of ex-Anathema / Solstice alumni Shaun Taylor-Steels. So, let’s be honest, given the undisputed pedigree of its core members, it should come as no real surprise that Godthrymm’s debut album, Reflections, is a triumphant blast of doom metal from masters of the craft!

Made up of seven fairly lengthy compositions (as expected) and finishing with a shorter instrumental, Reflections is an album best consumed in one sitting to achieve full effect. Tinged with a gothic melancholy but heavy as all hell, a lot of attention naturally focuses on Hamish Glencross, with his gruff but melodic vocal style and his exemplary playing bringing to mind the meisterwerks of Paradise Lost and, unsurprisingly, My Dying Bride.

Glencross’ lumbering riffs on the likes of “Monsters Lurk Within” and “The Grand Reclamation” are coated with a grit that gives them extra heft, while his use of harmonious leads recall Shades of God era Paradise Lost as they magnificently stoop and soar in all their splendour. Meanwhile the likes of “The Sea As My Grave” and “We Are The Dead” are weighty odes to depression, anchored sublimely by the tasteful and tailored drumming of Shaun Taylor-Steels.

Taking the best bits of the fabled Peaceville Three but adding their own identity to a recognisable template, Godthrymm have fashioned a superb album of exactly the type of doom that us Brits have always delivered better than anyone else!

We could go on and on about how damn good Reflections is but we’d sooner you went and listened to it yourself as Reflections will be remembered as one of the finest doom metal albums of 2020, no question. 9/10