Worship Metal Album Of The Week – My Silent Wake – Damnatio Memoriae

A Wake Up Call For Trad Doom Fans

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Chris Jennings in Album of the Week, Reviews

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Worship Metal’s Album Of The Week comes courtesy of UK Death/Doomers My Silent Wake!

My Silent Wake, the brainchild of Ian Arkley (Seventh Angel, Paramaecium, Ashen Mortality), have been hammering away for nigh on a decade now and in that time fans have been treated to everything from straight-up Death/Doom to acoustic albums and ambient instrumentals. Their latest release, Damnatio Memoriae – meaning condemnation or damnation of memory – marks a return to heavier realms for My Silent Wake and just as its title suggests, practically casts aside all memory of previous releases as MSW have upped their game considerably and recorded an album that should send Trad Doom fans into a frenzy.

The fast and playful tempo of “Highwire” toys with the notion that Doom has to lurch from one painfully drawn-out riff to another and recalls the majesty and Traditional Metal melody’s of Trouble’s “Assassin” while “And So It Comes To An End” draws comparisons with My Dying Bride’s melancholy Gothic Doom of old. The album’s centre-piece “The Empty Unknown” runs the risk of testing your patience at 14 minutes long but instead, its droning ornate gothic beauty (early Paradise Lost are an obvious parallel) steadily crawls into your headspace; cleanly sung passages jostling with deathly, yet audibly clear, growls and a mournful baritone balanced by often beautiful and sparse guitars and the kind of chest-crushingly heavy riffing that would make Tony Iommi proud. A truly astonishing Doom epic that numbs while it nurtures.

You need neither be a fan of Death Metal or Doom Metal to appreciate the musicianship on display on Damnatio Memoriae; this is simply music made for fans of Heavy Metal at it’s purest and is simply My Silent Wake’s finest hour to date. 9/10

The MSW crowd funding project to bring Damnatio Memoriae out on vinyl is live. Here’s the link if you want to hear this little beauty how it’s meant to be heard…… http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/msw-damnatiomemoriae