Saturnine

Haunted

Italian-style DSBM from London

Official Description

Haunted's fourth melancholy-clad EP. A subdued cacophony, a smear of clouds and light, pierced by stars so withered and decaying. With scattered rays of moonlight as the storms close in, Saturnine meanders between the serene and morose, oblivious, marcescent..

My Thoughts

I know essentially nothing about Hysteria, the woman behind the band Haunted, and I am completely okay with that. If I am being honest, the obscurantism and mystery of bands in this space is kind of my favorite thing about certain types of black metal and doom metal. I would add a new negation to the now-infamous Deathlike Silence motto “ NO CORE NO TRENDS NO FUN NO MOSH” – NO STARS. I like to think of it as the metal version of the “Fuck The DJ” trend in electronic music.

I do know, however, that Saturnine is a great EP. Melancholy, morose, serene, audio sadness, of a kind that I normally associate with Catania, Italy and War Against Yourself records in particular. This is not a “genre spanning” album in the sense of having some tracks in different genres. This is a synthesis of the parts of multiple genres that Hysteria likes and wants to employ in the service of atmosphere-making, and I love it.

It is obvious that a lot of thought and planning went in to making something both this restrained and this hard to quantify. This is 3am-light-a-candle-because-you’re-a-little-bit-drunk-and-no-one-in-the-whole-world-will-care-what-time-you-wake-up-tomorrow music.