Draconian – ‘Under a Godless Veil’ CD

Draconian is a Swedish gothic doom metal band formed in Säffle, Sweden, in 1994. They produce songs with atmospheric, melodic, and emotive characteristics.

Almost five years after their sixth long-player ‘Sovran,’ Draconian once again cast their breathtaking veil of melancholy over the world. This second full-length release featuring singer Heike Langhans delivers a captivating mélange of dreary doom and contrasty vocals and mixes Heike’s angelic female voice with Anders Jakobsson’s death growls.

The one-hour-long album, graced with haunting cover artwork by Natalia Drepina, is carrying the legacy of gothic doom metal à la My Dying Bride or Trees Of Eternity into the new decade and will drag the listener into a sorrowful cosmos right with the first notes of the spellbinding opener ‘Sorrow Of Sophia’ that interweaves beauty with crippling depression.

After crushing slow rhythms and the fragile ‘Sleepwalkers’ that leads through barren soundscapes, the band rises up to their best in the nine-minute long ‘Ascend Into Darkness,’ which will echo in the listener’s ears long after the final chord has died away.