Ever feel like the world is trudging slowly towards its inevitable doom? If so, Hooded Menace are on hand to provide the soundtrack. Due to ooze out of the Season Of Mist maw on January 26, 2018, Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed, the Finns’ full-length follow-up to 2015’s aptly titled Darkness Drips Forth, is a heavyweight walloping of death/doom grandeur that not only resonates with the horror of modern life, it also resonates with horrors past.
Based around various horror movies, Ossuarium… eschews the campy mannerisms of their similarly influenced peers for a grimly paced yet dramatic sound that will have you on your knees and pounding the earth, and we have a special preview in the seven-minute-plus, oxygen-depriving form of Charnel Reflections.
We started to play it ourselves but it left us too open-jawed to describe it, but thankfully frontman Lasse Pyykkö is on hand to offer some insight…
Says he, ”Initially we had decided not to reveal the horror movie sources behind the lyrics on our new album; to avoid any preconception for the listener, and because none of the lyrics are directly based on any movies but just inspired by movies – a big difference right there. BUT, for the sake of the approaching Halloween, let’s make an exception to our rule and expose the movie that inspired the lyrics of Charnel Reflections: it’s Demons Of The Mind from 1972. The lyrics are very much a flow of consciousness, quite surreal and metaphorical. The movie is just a starting point – an inspiration, so to speak.
“I guess the underlying lyrical theme is madness. I particularly like how the music glides from one mood to another with a smooth, determined flow to it – it’s calm and also savage – and I think, this reflects the lyrics rather nicely. This track is my new favourite in the Hooded Menace catalogue, which is rather cool thing considering that we’ve already reached our fifth album. Hooded Menace has always been all about memorable tunes, but I feel that we have fine-tuned our approach on Charnel Reflections – as well as on our entire new album.”
Dim the lights, draw the curtains, and enter the unforgiving realm of grimness that is Charnel Reflections below!
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And pre-order Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed here!
