Mournful strings weep elegantly over a slow-building tom-led rhythm and a bassline which drives a growing tension on the short but atmospheric intro track ‘The Dying Soil’ before the speaker cone-shredding guitar cuts in, thick and heavy, with a lumbering riff on ‘Light of Winter’.
They may be billed as ‘doom wizards’, but on fourth album ‘Solennial’, Alunah balance the crushing weight of power chords as heavy as hell and explosive percussion with evocative, melodic vocals.
On ‘Feast of Torches’, Sophie Day delivers what one could reasonably call a straight ‘rock’ vocal performance. Against a dense, overdriven backdrop, it works well, and calls to mind heavy rock contemporaries like Black Moth. ‘Lugh’s Assembly’ manages to pack some powerful hooks into its seven-and-a-half minute grinding riff-fest: that’s no minor achievement. There’s groove to the riffage, too, and with a greater emphasis on the direct, driving facet of their compositions over the atmospherics, Alunah are perhaps more overtly accessible than, say, Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard or Esben and the Witch, alongside whom one might place them.
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As for the cover of The Cure’s ‘A Forest’ which closes the album? It’s a fair bit slower than the original (to say the least), and, naturally, adds some piledriving guitars, but beyond that, it’s pretty faithful. Again, Sophie brings a sense of grandeur and majesty to proceedings. And in many respects, it’s a fair summary of the album as a whole, in that it brings together grand scale with driving force, heavy metal thunder and something altogether more spiritually uplifting.
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