Vicky
I’m late with this one, so we’ll skip a part of the introduction and get straight to business.
Somnent is usually listed as FFO (for fans of) Officium Triste, Novembers Doom, Marche Funébre, and Katatonia. Frankly, as a listener of Officium Triste, who has also seen the band live earlier this year, I don’t see a resemblance on all tracks. And that is probably because Somnent’s style is all over the place – they are doom, they are prog, they are melodic… I’m not saying they are tiring to listen to, but they definitely aren’t that easy to review. 😊
The band chose to have a melancholic prologue, called “A Voice of Inner Child”, which frankly reminded me quite a bit of Evadne’s “Shadows”, off The Fragile Light of Fireflies. What I forgot to mention at first was that both these tracks feature Natalia Drepina, from Your Schizophrenia, who seems to have become one of the newer melancholic queens, alongside Natalie Koskinen (Shape of Despair), Heike Langhans (Remina), and others.
A lot of Somnent’s songs seem to want to bring new light on the doom metal style, as an overall. There are times when tracks “fall” or have the tendency to reach gothic, atmospheric, death, melodic, post metal, and so on. For connoisseurs, “King of Ruin” sounds a little as if you were to mix The Foreshadowing, with Katatonia (modern), Váthos, and Moonspell.
“Where Silence Dwells,” albeit static and gloomy in spirit, proves to be one of the album’s finest songs, especially thanks to the following lyrics: We’re broken inside / As we fight for our lives / It’s all thrown away / As we’re led astray // Lost in the echoes / Of what could have been / Shattered reflections / Torn from within // A hollow embrace / In the arms of the void / Where dreams once lived / Now only destroyed. The song is emotional, allowing one to really feel the grief that lead vocalist Giovanni A. Vigliotti expresses through numerous growling styles, through spoken passages, and also through clean vocals. The harsh vocals do, however, resemble those of Pim Blankenstein (of Officium Triste), but the clean ones reminded me of Mikko Kotamäki (My Dying Bride, Swallow The Sun). No jokes for this album, as it is unexpectedly good, and it proves that you don’t need to live in the 1990s in order to create doom metal that doesn’t sound like a rip-off of The Peaceville Three (Paradise Lost, Anathema, My Dying Bride, for those who had forgotten). Also, kudos from the deepest pits of my darkened heart to Giovanni, this time for being a really good guitarist, but also to Shane Dohmen (the band’s bassist), and to drummer Alejandro Acuña, for a very good album. Emphasis on very, please.
To conclude, Somnent have made it clear that doom metal is not a phase, it’s not a trend, but it actually is one of those genres that come closest to the heart, they allow one to grieve, to love… To feel, in the truest, and purest sense of the word. And we will not be choosing albums of the year just yet (the Pilgrimage situation from last year was a one-time thing, one may argue), but know that Heirloom is a pretty decent contestant for the title.
Label: Ardua Records
Release date: October 30th, 2026
Website: https://somnent.com/
Country: USA
Score: 4.1/5.0
