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The Chicago-based band Novembers Doom, a fixture in the metal scene for over three decades, has announced its twelfth studio album, ‘Major Arcana.’ The album is scheduled for release on September 19, 2025, through Prophecy Productions and arrives six years after their previous record, the longest interval between albums in the group’s history. For 36 years, the band has produced music with lyrics centered on personal grief, loss, and despair; the new album shifts to a conceptual framework based on tarot cards.
The album’s lead single, also titled ‘Major Arcana,’ has been released with an accompanying music video. The six-and-a-half-minute track combines established elements of the band’s sound with different structural and thematic approaches. Vocalist and founding member Paul Kuhr stated that the song represents “significant growth for us, exploring new ideas and taking ourselves out of our comfort zone – both musically and thematically.” This new direction, after such a long and consistent career, provides context for the band’s current artistic phase.
History of an American Metal Anomaly
The development of Novembers Doom’s sound has been a long and gradual process, often placing them outside of prevailing American metal trends. Their history is one of deliberate sonic cultivation rather than mainstream commercial success.
From Aggression to Emotion (1989-1995)
The group began in 1989 under the name Laceration, performing death-thrash metal, a popular style in the suburban underground of that period. Paul Kuhr, however, found the purely aggressive approach to be insufficient. “We played the basic death/thrash metal, and clearly this was not the style we were comfortable in,” he stated in a 2000 interview. “We started to slow things down… It was heavy, it was slow, but it had no emotion.” The search for this emotional component became a defining characteristic of the band.
Inspiration came from the burgeoning United Kingdom death-doom scene. After hearing the debut album from the British band Cathedral and early material from My Dying Bride, Kuhr was affected by the integration of melody and raw feeling within a slow, heavy format. Influenced by these groups and others like Paradise Lost and Anathema, the band changed its name to Novembers Doom in 1992 and began to develop its own version of the style. Their 1995 debut album, ‘Amid Its Hallowed Mirth,’ released by Avantgarde Music and Nuclear Blast Records, was a raw and atmospheric work of doom death metal, a sound that was uncommon in the United States of America at the time.
An Outlier in the American Scene
In the early 1990s, the style of music Novembers Doom was creating was an outlier in North America. The prominent United States of America metal scenes were focused on different sounds, such as the technical death metal emerging from Florida, the groove-oriented metal from Texas, and the established thrash metal of the Bay Area. A band playing slow, melodic metal with melancholic themes was not aligned with these movements.
Their hometown of Chicago, which had produced industrial acts like Ministry and traditional doom bands like Trouble, did not have a specific scene for their particular hybrid style. Kuhr has commented on the difficulties of the local environment, noting that fan support often came only after a band had achieved recognition elsewhere, which fostered a sense of self-reliance.
This isolation, both from their American contemporaries and their United Kingdom influences, was a factor in the band’s creative direction. Without a local scene to integrate into, their songwriting became more insular and personal. This early experience contributed to their adoption of the “Dark Metal” descriptor, a term they use for a sound that does not fit into standard genre classifications.
Sonic Developments and a Look to the Past (2002-2007)
The 2000s brought increased critical attention for the band. A notable point was the 2002 album ‘To Welcome the Fade,’ for which they hired Grammy-winning producer Neil Kernon. Kernon’s production work, which included credits with Judas Priest and Cannibal Corpse as well as Queensrÿche and Hall & Oates, gave the album a powerful and clear sound that drew praise. Metal Maniacs magazine named it the number one metal album of 2002, a significant critical acknowledgement for the band.
After a North American tour with The Gathering, the band signed with The End Records and released ‘The Pale Haunt Departure’ in 2005. With the addition of guitarist Vito Marchese, the band’s songwriting began to include more direct death metal elements, resulting in a more aggressive sound that retained their established doom-oriented foundation.
Coinciding with the release of ‘Major Arcana,’ the band is also issuing a 20th-anniversary edition of ‘The Pale Haunt Departure’ on October 3, 2025. This will be the album’s first release on vinyl. The reissue is presented as a collector’s artbook with rare photos, liner notes, and seven bonus tracks, which consist of three live unplugged recordings and four original demos. The concurrent release of a new album and a reissue of a pivotal past one places the band’s current work in direct conversation with its history.
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The Components of Dark Metal
Novembers Doom uses the term “Dark Metal” to describe their sound, which is composed of specific lyrical, musical, and collaborative elements that have been refined over their career.
Paul Kuhr’s lyrics have been a constant feature of the band’s output for 36 years. He has consistently characterized his songwriting as a form of personal catharsis. “It is an outlet for me to be able to write and say everything I ever wanted to say,” he stated in an early interview. He has reiterated this view over the years, saying, “I have always used the lyric writing as my therapy and my outlet.”
This method involves a high degree of personal exposure. “It is hard to make the decision to wear your heart on your sleeve, and put yourself out there emotionally like that,” Kuhr acknowledged, adding that some songs are so personal that they are rarely performed in a live setting.
Further evidence of his focus on the lyrical aspect of his work is his 2006 book, ‘The Wayfaring Chronicles.’ The 84-page book contains the band’s complete lyrics up to that point, accompanied by Kuhr’s detailed explanations of the personal stories and meanings behind each song. The publication of such a volume is unusual in the metal genre and presents Kuhr as an author dedicated to the literary aspect of his music.
The Sound of Dark Metal
Novembers Doom uses the term “Dark Metal” to describe their sound, which is composed of specific lyrical, musical, and collaborative elements that have been refined over their career. The band’s self-described “Dark Metal” is built on contrasts: the alternation between Kuhr’s guttural death metal vocals and his clean baritone singing; the combination of heavy, down-tuned guitar parts with atmospheric and acoustic sections; and the blending of influences from progressive rock and gothic music.
To understand the utility of the “Dark Metal” label, it is helpful to consider the fractured subgenres that came to define the broader doom metal category, particularly from the 1990s onward. The scene splintered into highly specific styles. Funeral Doom, for instance, pushes the slow tempos of death-doom to an extreme, minimalist, and dirge-like pace. In contrast, Sludge Doom incorporates the grit of hardcore punk, characterized by a dirty, feedback-heavy sound and harsh, screamed vocals.
Another prominent branch is Stoner Doom, which emphasizes the psychedelic and groove-oriented elements inherited from Black Sabbath, often with fuzzy guitar tones and pharmaceutical lyrical themes. Novembers Doom’s sound, which blends melodic death metal, gothic sensibilities, and progressive structures, never fit comfortably into any of these emerging camps, making their self-devised term a practical necessity.
The refinement of this sound has been aided by a period of lineup stability. The current configuration of the band—Kuhr, guitarists Lawrence Roberts and Vito Marchese, bassist Mike Feldman, and drummer Garry Naples—has been in place since 2011. Kuhr has pointed out that the 2017 album ‘Hamartia’ and 2019’s ‘Nephilim Grove’ were the first two consecutive albums in the band’s history recorded with the exact same personnel. ‘Major Arcana’ is the third.
This stability has been a factor in their creative process, which Kuhr describes as a collaborative sequence: the guitarists compose the musical framework, which is then developed by the drummer, then the bassist, and finally Kuhr, who writes and arranges the vocals. This layered process depends on a close working relationship between the members.
The Role of Dan Swanö
A frequent collaborator in the band’s modern era is the Swedish musician and producer Dan Swanö. A prolific multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and engineer, Swanö is a highly regarded figure in the European metal scene, known for his work with a vast number of bands and for his influential role in shaping the sound of several subgenres.
Swanö first gained prominence as the frontman and principal songwriter for Edge of Sanity, one of the pioneering bands of the Swedish progressive death metal movement. With that group, he was among the first to integrate clean singing and complex, melodic arrangements into the death metal format, a development that culminated in the band’s 1996 album ‘Crimson,’ a single, continuous 40-minute piece of music.
His other primary musical outlet is Nightingale, a project that began as a solo gothic rock effort before evolving into a full-fledged progressive rock/metal band with his brother, Dag Swanö. He has also been a member of the death metal supergroup Bloodbath and the progressive metal band Witherscape, and he released a solo album, ‘Moontower,’ on which he performed all instruments.
Beyond his own musical projects, Swanö has had a long and prolific career as a producer and engineer at his Unisound studio. He has been credited on hundreds of recordings and is recognized for his significant impact on the sound of the 1990s Scandinavian metal scene, having worked with bands such as Opeth, Katatonia, and Dissection.
His role with Novembers Doom is that of a long-term technical and artistic partner. He has mixed and mastered several of the band’s albums, including 2005’s ‘The Pale Haunt Departure’ and the new ‘Major Arcana.’ Kuhr has described a working relationship built on trust, where the band ultimately defers to Swanö’s expertise to achieve their desired sound. This partnership provides a consistent, high-quality production that supports the band’s dynamic arrangements.
The New Album, ‘Major Arcana’
With ‘Major Arcana,’ Novembers Doom has undertaken a conceptual project where the theme, music, and physical product are interconnected.
A New Concept
The title track, ‘Major Arcana,’ is a six-and-a-half-minute composition that moves between heavy sections and clean-sung passages, containing what the album’s press materials describe as “frenetically energetic hooks.” The dynamic arrangement of the song reflects Kuhr’s statements about the band moving outside of its established methods.

The most notable change is in the lyrical content. After decades of writing autobiographical lyrics, Kuhr has based ‘Major Arcana’ on the mystical system of tarot. The Major Arcana cards of the tarot, which give their names to tracks like ‘The Fool’ and the final song ‘XXII (The World),’ represent universal archetypes and stages of a life journey. By using this symbolic framework, Kuhr applies his personal themes of fate and loss to a set of universal archetypes. This approach allows him to explore new narrative territory while maintaining the emotional content that has characterized his previous work.
The album’s physical editions also reflect this concept. In addition to standard CD and vinyl formats, ‘Major Arcana’ is available in premium versions that include a complete, custom-designed 79-card tarot deck and a “Fan Bonus Card” for future access to band events. This packaging turns the album into a multi-format artifact that directly engages with its central theme.
Album Contents
Press materials for ‘Major Arcana’ describe an album with a wide sonic and emotional scope. The ten tracks are said to range from the “hauntingly ethereal vibes of the opening track, ‘June,’” to the “brutally crushing songs like ‘Ravenous.’” The album is also reported to contain tracks of “epic sadness and yearning” such as ‘Mercy’ and ‘Bleed Static,’ alongside the “energetic hooks found on ‘The Fool’ and ‘Dusking Day.’”
Several guest musicians contribute to the album. Ben Johnson performs keyboards on all tracks, and Rhiannon Kuhr—Paul Kuhr’s daughter—provides backing vocals on three songs: ‘Chatter,’ ‘Dusking Day,’ and ‘XXII.’
Conclusion
The position of Novembers Doom in 2025 is best understood against the backdrop of a metal scene defined by what has been described as an “unprecedented fusion of old-school aggression and futuristic experimentation.” The current scene dynamics are fragmented, characterized by two parallel movements. On one hand, there is a resurgence of veteran acts, with thrash metal legends returning to their roots and reclaiming their ferocity. On the other, a new generation of artists is pushing boundaries through genre fusion, blending elements of deathcore, black metal, and even electronic or industrial sounds into new hybrid forms.
In this environment of revivals and radical experiments, Novembers Doom’s path appears distinct. Their position in the metal world has been sustained not by aligning with a particular trend, but by the cumulative output of a dozen albums that have been consistently well-received by critics.
The changes presented on ‘Major Arcana’ are therefore not a reaction to external pressures, but a development from a stable artistic foundation. After 36 years, Novembers Doom has a long history of creating music on its own terms. ‘Major Arcana’ is a continuation of this process, introducing a new conceptual lens through which the band explores its long-standing interests in melancholy, loss, and the human condition. The album, framed by the symbolism of tarot, presents the band’s enduring concerns in a new, archetypal language.
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