This record takes its time and doesn’t give a shit if you’re impatient about it, because it’s built on dragging riffs and repetition that are meant to wear you down rather than impress you, and once you accept that pace it starts to make sense. The guitars are heavy but not flashy, more like a constant pressure that never really lets up, and instead of sharp hooks you get riffs that just sit there and grind until they become familiar in an uncomfortable way.
You can hear the doom and gothic roots all over this, mixed with death metal weight, but it doesn’t feel separated or academic, it feels like a band that’s been listening to the same dark records for years and finally stopped caring about labeling things. The sound is thick, sometimes almost muddy, but that works in its favor, because this album would lose a lot of its impact if it was cleaned up or tightened too much.
The bass is doing a lot of work here and you feel it constantly, holding the songs together while the guitars stretch everything out, and the drums stay patient and restrained, avoiding any unnecessary bullshit that would break the mood. When the keys and piano come in, they don’t try to make things beautiful or dramatic, they just make everything feel colder and more empty, like there’s more space than there should be.
Vocally, nothing here sounds heroic or theatrical, which is good, because this kind of music doesn’t need someone trying to sound larger than life. The vocals feel worn down and pissed off in a quiet way, matching lyrics that circle around religion, decay, social collapse, and general human failure without turning it into some preachy statement or poetic performance.
The album works best when you let it run as one long piece, because the songs bleed into each other and sometimes drag longer than they probably need to, but that dragging is part of the experience. This isn’t about standout tracks or big moments, it’s about staying inside that dark, heavy atmosphere and not letting up.
It’s not a perfect record and it’s not trying to be, but it feels honest, grounded, and genuinely underground, without the fake grime or trendy darkness that a lot of bands lean on. In Absence of Light does what it sets out to do, and it does it without compromise.
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Thanks to Grand Sounds PR.
