Meet Maurice de Jong, whom you may know his work for the band’s Gnaw Their Tongues, Golden Ashes and Cloak of Altering has created a brand new project called The Sombre which is a hybrid of both death metal and doom metal in the veins of the mid 90’s from Atrocious, Soulwound and early Paradise Lost. This time around, his latest offering Into The Beckoning Wilderness is heavily inspired by not only creating artistic talent and wonderfully crafted compositional work, but to really understand and interpret the analogical beliefs on the music is really something you should dive into if you’re a fan of the narrative perspective for lyricism containing the deepest, saddest and melancholic songwriting he has done to date. His songs range anywhere from its slower, heavy driven tempos to its spaciousness, enchanted, enhanced and more accurately accessible to provide a monolithic and subterranean atmosphere that’s incredibly polished and emotional at times where you feel a sense of dread and depravity.
With the album running at 46 minutes in duration, your sorrow, spine shivering and escape from the world of his music speaks full volume as I get a sense of a masterful soundtrack material when you hear songs such as The Mother Of Sin And Ruin, Death In Black Cathedrals and The Pallbearer’s Hymn have fresh progressive structures alongside the way while micromanaging stronger and heart-wrenching musical deliveries. Even the album artwork speaks for itself since it captures a inspiring 16th-17th century portraying a story so insightful that these tracks are delivering the listener to hear their traditional death doom signatures with hint of melodic introductions.
Everything from the guitars, bass, drums and vocals are absolute perfection without any sense of repetitiveness alongside the production here is incredibly crystal clear making the vocals, drums, guitars, commendable passages from the atmospheric passages and intelligent songwriting makes Maurice’s craft feel ambitious, realistic and extremely dynamic. Into The Beckoning Wilderness represents personal characters that engages the listener to feel loss, desperate and emotionally drained inside and out and if you’re into the death doom metal genre with a more fluent and flexible approach then this is certainly the album you must have in your collection.
Overall Score: 8.0/10
Review by Jake Butler
