TodoMal, all is wrong. Talk to me about announcing your intentions in a rock ‘n’ metal setting. Already, the album cover positively screams misery and desolation without a note having been played on our music machine yet. It is actually an extract from a painting by Lluís Rigalt, titled Landscape with Ruins or simply Ruïnes, dated 1865. Yup, melancholy and decay date back eons already. Who would have thought that?
But what really drew us to this record was this oxymoron of a moniker called Graveyards of Joy. There’s usually nothing joyful about them cemeteries, unless you fall prey to the deepest recesses of gothic negative thinking. And these guys are not there quite yet. At least, we hope so.
The band saw the light of day in 2020, manned by a core duo – Christopher B. Wildman (Jade, live) and Javier Fernández Milla – who quickly followed up with two previous records. Records that didn’t quite make it onto our roster, though. Now, for this graveyard shift here, Javier Martínez (Jade)1 on drums, Cecilia Tallo (late of Maud The Moth) on keys, and Javier Félez Rodríguez on guitars prominently joined the act for recording.2 There’s more of them, so the act’s kind of a collective of sorts. But for the sake of time, we’ll skip the rest.
Now, with all that feisty and/or psychedelic background of all of them acolytes in crime, the RMR crew expected some weird, cosmically heavy, extremist metal. Hard to digest and even harder to accept. Yet, Graveyards of Joy greets you with lush soundscapes, highly melodic Doom Metal with a touch of Hard Rock and a fair dose of Gothic melancholy. The piece boasts a style that is as at home in woe country as it happens to languish in Pink Floyd-esque, richly embroidered soundscapes. Yes, THIS age-old outfit, famously home of this guy.
Densely written yet luxuriant harmonies, solos, riffing to dream for, and not a shred of growls make this record a unique concoction. In a way, the highly texturized soundscapes ooze wistful woe better than the folks over at Paradise Lost ever succeeded. TodoMal never raise their voices. Instead, the band injected some goth-infused yet subtle prog vibes into an already quite overloaded production. A refreshingly beautiful idea and one that never griped in any way throughout the album. Instead, Graveyards of Joy is imbued with some sort of majestic heaviness, an emotional weight that never quite leaves the stage as long as the music plays. This nicely contrasts with tasty atmospherics without ever being oppressive in any way.
You get tracks such as Deliverance that go from an almost magical quiet to an astonishing crescendo, racing to a fulminant end in halting steps. A track that will sound absolutely sublime on stage. Further, an astonishingly well-integrated procession of instruments appears at certain moments of Graveyards. Intrusions of the haunted violin, Hammond-like sounds, brass that suddenly erupts, or the lone piano. All of that is woven into an ebb and flow of labyrinthine and ornate bouts of advanced songsmithing typical for this particular piece.
In the end, Graveyards of Joy turned into a multilayered potpourri of artfully intertwined, dreamlike excursions into woe and tribulation. A record dispensing doom in spades without crushing the audience at the same time. One that excels in gothic melancholy, with a densely textured intensity bestowed with intricate delicacy and subtle heaviness. In short, the RMR crew found an astonishingly well-written piece full of gleaming gems and hidden nuggets that will command your attention to the very end. This, however, means that one listening session will not be enough. So, have a seat, dim the lights, and give this particular sematary of deliberations and grief your full attention.
You won’t regret it.
Record Rating: 8/10 | Label: Season of Mist | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 3 July 2026