Aldebaran: Embracing the Lightless Depths

Funeral doom is meant to conjure up a powerful emotional reaction, one that celebrates utter despair. Aldebaran has been reveling in just such hopelessness and rejoicing in the transcendent beauty to be found in desolation since its no doubt excruciating birth in 2004.

Embracing the Lightless Depths is the quartet’s sophomore album, and although the band is named after one of the brightest stars in the sky, its work is as intimidating as the darkest of nights.

Following on from 2010’s single-song EP, Buried Beneath Aeons, the band’s latest album comprises two similarly immense doom tracks, interlinked by three brief and more gentile suites. Acclaimed producer Billy Anderson is at the helm, ensuring Embracing the Lightless Depths has the requisite and all-important tonal depth. The two main tracks, “Forever in the Dream of Death” and “Sentinel of a Sunless Abyss”, are both monstrously heavy, asphyxiating dirges. Gravelled vocals rise from the bowels of the earth, while glacial riffs and reverberating percussion hammer the coffin shut forevermore.

Aldebaran’s ’07 debut full-length, Dwellers in Twilight, was an underrated gem of wretchedness. Embracing the Lightless Depths has taken all that was woebegone on that album and amplified the anguish tenfold.