Ceremonium

Into the Autumn Shade (1995)

Into the Autumn Shade is a unique album that it fits squarely between both Death Metal and Doom Metal. It shares traits from both styles and these are used prominently in the music (and not just as a small taste of either added to the other as a point of differentiation). It is a testament to Ceremonium that they were able to pull off this sound off without the quality suffering and the music turning into a mish-mash of random genre ideas.

It is mostly Death Metal in structure and the music has a fairly high amount of movement between riffs and has a certain flowing nature. There are sections full of swirling chromatic tremolo outbursts and also otherwise faster melodic sequences. Despite also having major parts of songs with the prominence of a slower tempo, the music from a conceptual point of view feels like it is written more like a Death Metal album due the flow between the riffs and the absence of an agonisingly slow, minimalist and careful build-up to a moment of emotional catharsis that characterises a lot of Doom Metal. The structure of these songs moves much faster than that. Mood-wise it is also not as as melancholic or brooding as a lot of Doom Metal (but it is not without these qualities in isolated cases). It feels like it is concerned more, in the slower parts, with the vastness of existence and reflections upon this. 

As a whole the music is monstrous and violent, but in a different way to most Death Metal. It bides its time a lot, like a slumbering behemoth eyeing its prey, but when it lashes out it becomes nightmarish. The bass guitar sound really helps here, it has a deep, thudding sound and it hits really hard, giving the rhythm section a really nasty undertone. At times it is like being beaten mercilessly with a blunt instrument and given the mostly melodic approach to the guitar, the ominous thick bass sound is really needed here. The vocals are deep, horrifying growls and add an extra layer of low-frequency depth to the music. Really good stuff. The band also makes use of keyboards sparingly and unobtrusively to create a feeling of heightened suspense/tension. All in all, the album is more Death Metal in tone and atmosphere, with a few Doom-like moments of introspection thrown in – which are used to create rises and falls in the music. It is as if those type of really existential, moody slower sections found in a lot of the older Swedish Death Metal (pre-Gothenburg Melo-Death) are used much more prominently (and not just as a tension release).