Denali comes to life.
Created in 2020 in England by Ross King (vocals, Countless Skies), Adam C. Taylor (guitar, Everest Queen), James McGrenery (guitar, The Graven Sign, Elysian Divide, Dreadbeggar), Simon Marston (bass, ex-Cerberus Unchained) and Nathan Robshaw (drums, Countless Skies, The Graven Sign), the band releases Denali, its first EP, in April 2022.
With only three songs, this first Denali EP introduces us to a small half an hour of a pure traditional Doom/Death. Whether the mild introduction of Catafalque drives us to a weighing rhythmic, the follow-up will be more contrasted, using slowness and heady sonorities the band sometimes couples to tortured howlings and haunting melodies. The rhythmic is regularly interrupted by a dark quietness, then the hooking final leaves us with Beneath The Waves, a foggy and dissonant composition, which also offers an unhealthy energy which slips into the weighing slowness. The song offers a quite dark and burdensome acceleration, just like devastating harmonics and an intense melancholy, as well as a powerful and regular blackness. After a final spurt, the band offers Deathless, its last track, which couples majestic and as weighing orchestrations to slow and melancholic riffs. Very visceral, the song goes back to the roots of Melodic Doom/Death which slowly seizes us by the throat until this soft and appeasing final.
The sound of Denali is as pure as weighing. With Denali, the band offers an accessible, slow and haunting sound which marks, pervades and mesmerizes its listener, creating a veil of as heavy as melodic melancholy.
90/100