Album review: Gévaudan – Umbra

When darkness becomes fathomless enough, one can barely resist the pull to fall in. That is the overwhelming atmosphere around the superb second album from English doom stalwarts Gévaudan. A sprawling concept record reckoning on depression through a narrative of grim Eldritch Horror, it draws listeners towards the titular central shadow before spiralling out into the strange lightlessness of the void. There is a melancholic beauty there, and they mine every ounce.

The decision to deliver a single 43-minute track is intriguing. There are obvious tonal and musical shifts here, which could have signalled splits between ‘songs’: the break from Candlemass-style epic doom into something far proggier and more ambient around the 13-minute mark, for instance, or the swerve from impassioned, synthy melodrama towards piano-driven mournfulness around 33. The decision not to carve up the body of the music feels like a bold commitment, both to the overarching concept, and to having listeners experience the album as a single composition.

True to that, as much as any record in recent memory, a single-sitting playthrough of Umbra feels like an epic odyssey. Sure, Gévaudan seem to have pulled back from some of their most progressive flourishes on 2019’s Iter, but that’s solidified a more coherent through-line onto which listeners can latch, like a slow zipchord into the unknown. From UK legends My Dying Bride and Anathema to the likes of Pallbearer and YOB from the other side of the Atlantic, there is no shortage of flattering sonic comparisons to be drawn. Perhaps the biggest compliment, though, is that, with Umbra, Gévaudan are back on a path to be funereal genre greats in their own right.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: My Dying Bride, Candlemass, Pallbearer

Umbra is out on October 13 via Meuse Music