Summoning - With Doom We Come

The LOTR-obsessed With Doom We Come (and Summoning in general) is a bit difficult to get into upon hearing the large battle drums of the opening track and the thin guitar riff signaling an imminent black metal explosion, because that explosion never coming is a surefire disappointment upon first listen. Necessarily, a shift in the frame of reference away from the usual black metal standpoint is needed to go into this album.

After being repetitively copied and pasted throughout the rest of the track, the first song’s sole riff is somewhat enhanced by swirling folk instrumentation in a more ambient and drone-like fashion than that of a structured black metal song, and much of the album’s tracks builds their fogs of ambiance around a single repeated guitar riff throughout. Consequently, the album’s sprawling dirge might be more accurately described as viking metal, but even that term leaves too many loose ends unaccounted for in Summoning’s aesthetic. Slightly blackly metallic, stoically folky, battle march soundscapes is the most complete phrase I can think of to describe what Summoning put forth.

From this understanding of what the album is going for, its musical choices make a lot more sense. The first song remains a disappointing opener to me, too much like short, non-song intro track stretched out for no good reason. “Silvertine” and “Carcaroth”, however break even and then take the lead for the album with more directional weavings of moody folk guitars and horns into full-fledged songs, cinematic in size. Whereas in the album’s opener, the drawn out, filtered, and weak guitar is just unflattering, in the two tracks following it it’s a fitting piece of the majestic structure. And “Herumor” continues this improved use of the metal stringed instrumentation with ethereal choir vocals lifted by the guitar riff and carried higher by the clashes of cymbals and steady percussion. The “Barrow-Downs” interlude track, does little to add or take away from the album, and would have been a much more fitting opener than “Tar-Calion” with a booming musical continuation afterwards. “Night Fell Behind” picks up pretty well and I enjoyed the addition of some bassier elements to the song’s sonic trunk, but it’s at this point the album seems to feel a bit formulaic with its use of similar instrumentation to try to achieve a similar emotional climax. “Mirklands” is the kind of tinny guitar and leather drum led epic “Tar-Calion” could have been, actually moving through a few interesting dynamic sections, still falling victim to the sense of it being part of an excessively used formula. The semi title track “With Doom I Come” wraps up the album in a tastefully not overly bombastic way with beautiful but leashed instrumentals held from constant explosive barking as if to make room for dialogue, ending the album with falling action and resolution rather than just at a typical climax.

Overall, With Doom We Come is not full of highly impressionable motifs or much in the way of catchiness for that matter, it’s just kind of pretty, in the kind of way a secluded forest or a huge mountain is pretty. It’s an album whose prettiness takes a different, not exactly black metal mindset to enjoy. The LOTR aesthetic attached to the album is kind of on a by-name-only basis, but the soundscapes created could easily hearken to one’s imagination of Middle Earth. It’s also an album whose secrets are few and quickly revealed by way of its formulaic arrangement. Fortunately, it hardly takes much away from the album’s shimmer and it’s definitely one of the more unique “black metal” experiences I’ve had in a while.