Album Review: Angmodnes – “Rot of the Soul” (Funeral Doom)

Written by Kep

Dutch funeral doom trio Angmodnes first caught my ears back in 2022 with their debut EP The Weight of Eternity. Their sound was sorrowful, plaintive, and crushing, with a penchant for poignant melodies and pervasive dreary atmosphere. It was a promising listen, but at only 36 minutes (the sound you hear is grindcore fans passing out at the concept of a 36-minute EP) I needed more to really come to a verdict on Angmodnes. Would their songwriting hold up over the extended runtime of a full-length? Would the atmosphere wane or wear? Would the melodic elements get old?

Rot of the Soul provides the answers to all my questions and then some. The atmosphere has been ratcheted up to even higher levels thanks to the full-time addition of F.S., whose ethereal soprano lines and periodic warm mezzo tones help to paint an even richer texture than on The Weight of Eternity. It’s in her increased contribution that the album feels most unique. Sure, funeral doom with melody and haunting cleans isn’t a new concept, but the way F.S.’s voice is used—almost never as a “featured” piece, nearly always as a layered harmonic and textural element—stands out. 

They use this heightened atmosphere in tandem with the same slow, elegant style of riffing that defined the EP. The passages of towering classic funeral doom have heft and sort of begrudging sorrow to them; not despondent, but instead a sense of anger underpins the tones of hopelessness and sadness anytime the band is in full funeral doom force. The album sounds excellent from a production standpoint, too, with a wealth of colors, textural clarity, and the ability to sound absolutely massive when it matters; these things are paramount in the style. Hats off to multi-instrumentalist frontman Y.S., who handled recording and mixing, as well as to masterer Greg Chandler.

The band embraces songwriting that is all too often overlooked in funeral doom: the songs have narratives within them, moving from passage to passage organically, building to climaxes and then sinking away from those high points, never staying static on one motif or riff for too long. You journey with Angmodnes as you listen, experiencing every emotion alongside them, because the songs are crafted in such a way that they’re always moving toward or away from something. To that end, they make frequent use of those haunting cleans from F.S., both to establish atmosphere and to establish sections with the tracks. They also get a lot of mileage out of Y.S.‘s mournful yet powerful cleans. His singing moments always feel like arrival points, and the doleful timbre of his voice never fails to hit home; though if I had to levy a criticism toward the album, it would be that they might benefit to use his passages more creatively. Maybe switch things up and start with cleans instead of growls, or do a song with only one or the other, you know?

Rot of the Soul’s core identity is one of textural variety in the service of emotion—which I understand may sound uncommon for a subgenre often disparaged for perceived monotony, but it’s true. “Beneath” opens the record with choral harmonies, almost movie soundtrack-esque, and later uses F.S.’s voice in spoken form. Y.S.’s harsh vocals range from your traditional chesty growls to throaty midrange screams and raspy anguished cries, and the closing title track’s long passage of theatrical spoken word over piano and cello is particularly memorable. “The Hours” and “Agony of the Sun” both set their respective moods with piano—the latter cleverly using a triplet pattern in the piano to set up the full band’s arrival in tempo—and the album’s final stretch adds touches of piano into the full band sound. There are your typical sections of crushing, stately funereal dirge, passages with doggedly running double bass below, and even some truly awe-inspiring blast beat-driven walls of sound (the one in “Agony of the Sun” is one of the most stunning moments on the album). I’ve heard people complain about getting bored listening to funeral doom, but there’s more than enough variety and narrative to keep that from happening here. 

The lyrical themes revolve around depression and the inability to cope with the sorrows of the world. Angmodnes allows the music to sink earnestly and deeply into that forlorn and frustrated place, with a wealth of vivid lyrics that directly influence the sounds. “Beneath”, for example, uses the sun as a symbol for the unfeeling repetition of life on earth, and at its first melodic climax Y.S. sings the following: “It trails along the vaulted sky; / A slow crawl, ever the same / Its vacant oppressive stare / Diminishing us with its emptiness / As we toil in its loveless warmth.” Later a set of melodies descend like the setting sun, just before F.S. speaks of the sun’s nightly departure that leaves us in the dark. The poetry of Rot of the Soul’s lyrics can’t be overstated; the words are aching and beautiful and expressive without beating you over the head with clichés and unnecessary imagery. From the final section of the closing track: “And you overcame life itself / By the horror of looking for an answer to it; / You have become a shadow / That dances in the night and vanishes at dawn.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

To put it simply, if you enjoy funeral doom, you will love Rot of the Soul. It’s got all the hallmarks of the subgenre, plus an emotive style of songwriting that keeps the narrative flowing, never bogging down or getting stagnant. And if funeral doom isn’t your thing, this might be a good starting point. It’s an impressive debut full-length effort from Angmodnes, and one would hope we’ll hear more from them sooner rather than later.