To begin with, Decemberance must be recognized as an institution of Greek Extreme Doom.
The current album reads like a biblically tripartite, dark reflection on human existence, on being and non-being, absurdity and failure. A musical triptych of a world without God.
The Ariadne’s Thread
At first, I wondered whether the nine-minute interlude “The Blue Thread” for cello and piano really needed to be this long in order to make clear that it’s about the transition from grappling with the arduous struggle of life in “Scaffold” to the anger and despair over the impending meaningless death in a godless world in “Shrouds.” On the album, it initially disrupts the flow and forces the listener to perceive the tracks as separate titles. But on the one hand, it plays with the slow-motion idea of Krautrock as practiced by bands like Faust, and on the other, “The Blue Thread” functions thematically as a kind of meditative moment, which, like T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, provokes a pause, a reflection on the transition from hope to despair.
The piece is thus so essential as a musical bridge that it shapes the other parts into a coherent cycle, in which musical dynamics and existential themes mirror each other. Remaining with the image of the triptych, this introspective reflection, the meditative pause, the attempt to recognize and understand, is the central component of the work — the focus of the eye or ear.
Here, the music becomes an invitation to introspection, a mirror under the guiding sign of the titular Implosion of all meaning. The Blue Thread is the Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth of life from nonexistence back into nonexistence, and for such a journey, Decemberance offer no steps, only a sparse pattern of introspection.
I truly grasped this idea when the band recently blew me away at Doomship with an interlude (similar in content but musically completely different) of droning, bass, and samples. It elegantly bridged two halved pieces in a medley without inserting a break, and in this light, “The Blue Thread” suddenly worked for me under this new perspective. It says: Let yourself fall and be guided by the music inward and then back outward — and it worked far less hippie than it sounds.
Sisyphus as Land Surveyor
The almost 25-minute opening track “Scaffold” walks a fine line between Melodic Death Doom and Gothic Metal. Decemberance draw on melodic leads and muted yet tragic growls from Scandinavian Melodic Death Doom and add a few symphonic to folkloric elements from Gothic Metal.
Additionally, there’s an expansive instrumental sequence that tries to score with voice samples but comes off a bit forced. Nevertheless, a pleasant dynamic remains, one that occasionally breaks out of the slow tempo with tremolo and blast beats, slows down to a funeral-like pace at times, and unfolds dreamy acoustic passages, before returning to the tried-and-true Melo Death Doom/Gothic Metal.
Thanks to the acoustic sections and the prominently tragic cello, the band’s unique touch is preserved — reminiscent at times of Celestial Season and Estatic Fear.
The lyrics of the piece provoke memories of the Sisyphus interpretation in the existentialist philosophy of Albert Camus, where life is a sequence of trial and failure, of construction and destruction, and the desperate search for meaning in a world without answers. It’s Kafka’s desperate land surveyor who never makes progress through the maze toward the castle.
While the self fails to create a world “brick by brick” and “day after day,” it is simultaneously torn apart by the inner war — a modern Sisyphus à la Camus, who reluctantly accepts his fate without ever finding redemption.
No Flowers for Charon
The final track “Shrouds” describes the end — the dissolution of the self, the confrontation with emptiness and death — without the usual comfort of religion or ritual. Just as the not irascible but merciless ferryman Charon takes in and carries his passengers, this piece is stripped of all illusions and rituals normally associated with death. No flowers, no escort, no mourning — only the transport into emptiness.
And at over 37 minutes, the grittier and more bitter final piece “Shrouds” acts as an aggressively starting and tragically fading counterpart to “Scaffold”. This Funeral Doom song (Yes, this is a Funeral Doom Page) is characterized as counterpart to “Scaffold” by a dynamic that includes Death Metal passages, acoustic sequences, a music box, and a deep tribute to Esoteric, including the well-known “What life?” sample of Al Pacino as Lt. Col. Frank Slade from “Scent of a Woman”.
Unlike in “Scaffold,” some transitions here creak and push like a rough, dirty gravel path. I guarantee this is intentional. I guarantee that here form follows function — that the meaninglessness of life, the absolute nullity of existence, becomes tangible. This is the current of the Styx in a radical fusion of despair and a nihilistic end, both musically and lyrically portrayed in “Shrouds”.
This sober, almost nihilistic perspective is reminiscent of the literary works of Samuel Beckett. The renunciation of “hyacinths” and “lilies” on the grave is a rejection of all inherited meaning, a denial of all hopes and promises of life after death. Pain, despair, and rage become — musically and lyrically — a manifesto of implosion: of inner decay and meaninglessness. What remains is emptiness.
Conclusion
Now I must be honest. This album is really damn good, but Implosion is not destined to win innovation awards. With their three sprawling tracks, gliding at times through Kraut and Prog ideas, Decemberance certainly don’t offer an album that will become everybody’s darling. It is intentionally unwieldy and idiosyncratic, although it doesn’t blaze new trails within the genre.
It remains a successful event in Extreme Doom — often a bit proggy in undertones and leads, at times daring to be very restrained, but indeed a little funky in the bass. An album mostly carried by an elegant and deliberate flow of music, all the way to the sample-backed post-rock Pelican sequence in “Scaffold”.
As listener; for the right moments, the dynamic flow of the music is the album’s greatest strength — but in the wrong moments, it can also be its greatest weakness.
Implosion confronts and challenges its listeners to find their own path amid chaos, despair, and rage, to find their own ideas, to discover their own meaning in the absurd. That already achieves a lot, but it also remains a hurdle — not least because some guests at the Doomship Festival seemed simply overwhelmed after the band’s performance by the sheer, unrelenting flow of the music. And the same can very well happen to you with Implosion.
