Starting with the conclusion: A Silence Too Old is Aphonic Threnody’s best album since When Death Comes. Not that any of the previous albums were bad – far from it, perhaps The Great Hatred and The All Consulting Void seamd a little generic at times and with this new Full length in hands it seems like the band was on a seeking journey. From the vantage point of A Silence Too Old, it feels as though Riccardo Veronese has spent a decade preparing for this moment. And once again, Riccardo has reassembled the band. This time, he is joined by J.S. Decline of the avant-garde Australian wonder-ensemble Estrangement and the nowadays omnipresent Déhà.
Apocalyptic, Gothic and Sublime
At its core, Riccardo remains true to himself, even in this new constellation. Aphonic Threnody once again crafts a melodic hybrid situated in the grey zone between Scandinavian-style melodic death doom and a more American-inflected funeral doom, unafraid to embrace melody, grandeur, and complexity. A Silence Too Old builds a monumental structure of oppressive weight, decay, and fragility. The mix, which often reaches for something sacral in its reverb-laden vastness, is both deep and expansive – granting space for the elegiac moments to breathe and the heavy ones to press down. The crushing riffs and expressive drumming gain more dynamism than before. The rhythm section provides a solid framework that maintains pressure in eruptive passages and tension in fragile ones.
Here, Aphonic Threnody scratches the edge of what I consider the apotheosis of Apocalyptic Funeral Doom – akin to Woebegone Obscured’s last album The Forestroamer or Sanctuary in the Depths by Solemn They Await. A violin here, a cello there – they offer a sorrowful counterpoint to despair and rage. Melodies are more present than before, and the guitar work moves impressively between riff-driven heaviness, acoustic interludes, melodic leads, and a newfound power in breathtaking solos (as in Light The Way) delivered by J.S. Decline. Déhà growls, rasps, and sings with fitting variety. The apocalyptic interplay of brute force and contemplative calm has been perfected. His growls glide seamlessly into fragile, sometimes sacral clean vocals rich in reverb, before returning from those moments of stillness with infernal desperation and rage. It’s a transition all three musicians carry out with remarkable finesse. Time and again, the atmosphere tilts – from echoing stasis to aggressive impact, from introverted sonic meditation to frenzy.
A dark romanticism reminiscent of the golden days of gothic metal, yet without kitsch, emerges in gentle melodies and harmonies – in neoclassical elements, female vocals (Further On), acoustic guitar, cello, or viola. Particularly the progressive-leaning solos by J.S. Decline, paired with those lonely string flourishes – a viola here, a cello there – visibly elevate A Silence Too Old. Grief, anger, longing, and resignation interweave and form a multi-layered, thought-out, and intense sonic architecture of decay.
A Melancholic Epic of Decay
A Silence Too Old is an elegiac journey through existential abysses. Across six expansive compositions, Aphonic Threnody presents a work that lies between funeral doom, poetry, and contemplative philosophy – carried by Déhà’s voice, which releases grief in monumental waves of pain.
Each song is a mosaic of loss, self-dissolution, and yearning for redemption. Especially in Annabelle, a narcissistic wound of abandonment is laid bare: love as the anchor of identity, the loss not just of the Mead-ian “Me,” but of the recognition of self in the eyes of that one other person, becomes a metaphysical collapse. A catastrophe whose personal dimension doesn’t dissolve into powerless lament, but erupts in apocalyptic fury: “I am the punisher of Gods, mark my words.” Pain morphs into aggression – into vengeful metamorphosis – into rancor against existence and its origin.
Steeped in the tradition of dark romanticism – with Edgar Allan Poe casting a clear shadow – Annabelle evokes Poe’s Annabel Lee, yet transforms its melancholic, nearly necrophilic romance into the expressionist frenzy of a deliriously visionary language that recalls Lovecraft more than it does elegy: “Luminous eyes, crying molten lava / Mouth speaking in tongues and larvae.” In Further On, an existentialist tone emerges, reminiscent of Samuel Beckett: the path as endless repetition, the goal an illusion, hope “a parasite on my landscape.”
The Self in the Face of Nothingness
The album’s central theme remains the brokenness left behind by decay – of love, the body, memory, and belief. A Silence Too Old points toward the silence that remains when what once gave life meaning has withered, and one falls mute. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of voicelessness in the face of the absurd, as Heidegger might put it.
“The sword, the only friend I know / Is too heavy to bear for the unknown” – the heroic subject collapses under the weight of metaphysical vacuum. The final track, The Void of Existence, offers no real redemption, only a resigned embrace of nothingness, in the face of an unwanted existence: “Stuck in this prison of flesh and awaken nightmare.”
A Silence Too Old is a Memento Mori that places little faith in salvation and more in Schopenhauerian dignity through suffering. Aphonic Threnody manages to merge personal torment with literary imagery and philosophical depth: profound, dark, and painful but also sacral and sublime.
