This Gift is a Curse – Heir (2025) – Review

Oh yeah, baby. Time to stop wobbling about strange soundscapes and back to burning off some mental fat. And that’s best done with unapologetic furious metal, stuff the usual classical music connoisseur would not touch with a ten-foot flagpole. Noisome metallic items that the RMR crew cannot really resist.

So, descend into This Gift is a Curse‘s unhealthy and wickedly heathen realm. An unwelcome apparition of a beast so vile it might make you decamp in a hellbent hurry. Meet the Heir, bow your head in submission, and be afraid. Very afraid.


Here is to one of these … [...] Click to raid more!

Officium Triste – Hortus Venenum (2024) – Review

Officium Triste - Hortus Venenum - Album Cover

Officium Triste‘s last record left a pretty hefty impression over at the Review Desk. In an abundance of weeping guitars, tear-drenched melodies, and relentless growls, the band delivered a mountainous relic of oldish doom. After all, the piece talked about The Death of Gaia, no less. Albeit that the record’s overbearing intensity and inherent repetitive nature finally got the better of us after a while.

So, here we’re entering the poisoned garden. Hortus Venenum the band called their newest creation. A new excursion into an ominous world of invisible dangers, potions, and deception? We would have liked a … [...] Click to raid more!

And Now The Owls Are Smiling – Epitaph (2022) – Review

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And Now The Owls Are Smiling - Epitaph - Album Cover

I won’t hide it from you. The RMR crew had severe issues with some parts of atmospheric doom, blackened or not. Specifically with bands that wasted our time with useless shenanigans that add zero value to the overall offering. And these still get our mutual blood boiling all over again – even after all that time.1 So, we kept our ears out of that particularly odd corner of the extreme metal multiverse for a while. Because somehow, this ‘thing’ almost always collided with good metal craftsmanship so far.

So, should we poke this particular bear all over again? I … [...] Click to raid more!

Rise To The Sky – Every Day, A Funeral (2022) – Review

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Rise to the Sky - Every Day A Funeral - Album Cover

Indeed. It looks like the folks over at Officium Triste really are in mucho trouble right now. A short while ago, the RMR crew enjoyed a deluge of tears with the folks over at Celestial Season.1 And now, more great Doom Death Metal is heading our way. Rise to the Sky the outfit is called, a Chilean one-man show. And they want a funeral, every friggin’ day. Woe, that truly calls for an ocean of tears. So, go ahead, inflate that rubber dingy, and grab yer oars. A dark storm is a-lurkin’.


The RMR crew is traditionally wary … [...] Click to raid more!