Riddling the mind with six increasingly dark and distraught scenes amidst the approaching descent of the night Tampere, Finland-based epic doom metal quintet BELL OF MIMIR deploy both tragedian majesty and chest-caving despair on this impassioned and thickly atmospheric debut full-length album. Setting its scene at maxed melodrama and pouring it on thick via slow-going, unfettered performances ‘Nocturne‘ is both classicist and unreal in its nigh operatic narrative. A fall away into deathlike sleep which sours and wilts with every step it plants aground this experience is both outrageous, over the top in a few different ways, and yet admirable for how deeply it dives into its moodiness with great capability and confidence for a first album from a relatively new troupe.

Bell of Mimir formed circa 2021 by way of guitarist Olli Karhu not long after leaving his brief post in God Disease as he’d quickly built up a team that’d best realize a vision of traditional doom metal excess. Deceptively melodic in its shambling treatment of epic doom metal ‘Nocturne‘ comes from the maestro’s classical music education and underground music appreciation, making room for a broadened understanding of simpler rock structured heavy metal canon unto evolved, but unhurried formae. Of course Finnish doom metal is no stranger to such operatic gloom, specifically contributions from vocalist Korvenmaa whose register brings to mind a more affected stance which sits not far from groups like Minotauri, Spiritus Mortis and “newer” bands such as The Wandering Midget though most of these performances are set to suit the fixated nature of these songs.

Presented in spacious yet muffled resound the dreary form of melodic doom metal here is best described along the “epic” doom tradition though they’ve taken an odd angle which is not power-doom, not quite gothic doom but maudlin and estranged a la Warning (U.K.) to some degree. Opener “Nocturne” doesn’t take us there immediately to start as it floats through its organ-grinding introduction and greater seven minute haul with the goal of haunting the listener outright. Though they’ve avoided making a direct, or, obvious melodic statement beyond the slowly revealed lead guitars the purpose of this song appears to be leaning into the throes of it all, providing a piece in exposition of their blustering, dramatic sound. It is the sort of plod I can get behind with some enthusiasm, an exaggeration which sets Korvenmaa soaring through his lines outright and lines up the listener with Bell of Mimir‘s strongest traits: Odd chord choices and emotionally driven vocal expression, it all feels like it’ll collapse any second but they ultimately find their balance and wits within each piece.

From what I gather most of ‘Nocturne‘ had been demoed and arranged by Karhu and the vocal chair came later on, so, we find only one piece which attributes vocal arrangement to Korvenmaa, “Dark and Silent”, which turns out to be both a key single and the piece which’d most easily tapped into the band’s sorrowful, doomed commune. Harmonized vocal layers and the odd folkish guitar progression back a keening, soured and melody-pushed plod through their crumbling theatre. It is a destitute and nigh shoegazing piece at certain points which begins to justify the earlier mention of Warning (see also: “Spell of Doom” b/w “Nightfall” if you disagree) with its revelatory climb. The emotional heft, or at least the dramatism available to Bell of Mimir‘s sound has its most believable moment there.

Side B is even more distraught, less-than mellowed and ordered with its slightly more contained song structures, a few bigger riffs, and some of the less precise, at times disarrayed cohesion between the vocalist and lead guitar built melodies. Those greater points of unlinked, often out of sync feeling melodies eventually begin to speak to the intended style of Bell of Mimir. Another key single, “Folding”, almost feels like its awkwardly danced-through rhythms are incidental, disjointed to start yet ear worming the closer we move to its conclusion. Though there are some ‘modern rock’ inspiration to be found here in the beats and movement of some songs Bell of Mimir are distinctly a doom metal band, albeit an over the top vision for one which focuses on escalating intensity rather than pointedly varietal pacing and structure song-over-song. For my own taste a sort of ‘sameness’ creeped into the album just as it was ending (around “Folding” as it passed the baton to “Nightfall”), though some would develop their own station with repeated listens. If the album ended with “Nightfall” it’d have struck me as brilliant yet reserved at just about a half hour, probably an ideal result from my point of view but there is yet one final sixth of the whole deal and it didn’t fully work for me.

A harp-like stroke of a 12 string accompanied by dread-bound guitar feedback introduce an (initially) compelling final piece, “Devil’s Garden”, a droning instrumental which features as the only compositional collaboration on the album. Manifesting as an ominous dark ambient drone with some woodwinds and various scraped and feedback-dipped mashing of the fretboard its full six minute drift is uninteresting filler from my point of view. For an album which showed so much of its own “big” personality up front and went with it via five well-developed pieces it was a bummer to find the closing track to be an experimentally voiced void-out. If the album had ended with a shorter song, maybe a call-back to the keyboard sunken intro (via opener “Nocturne”) in reprise it’d have rounded itself better and instead there is only surreal despair at the endpoint… and not the sort that matches the struggling lilt Bell of Mimir develop on the rest of the album.

For a debut full-length album from a virtually unknown band in a well-stated sub-genre there is yet something freshly cut, aspirational and bold coming from Bell of Mimir‘s camp, a volatile concoction that lines up with the over the top treatment epic doom metal deserves. In this sense ‘Nocturne‘ is both brilliantly stated and ‘ready connective in a serious way yet raw and bristling with enthusiasm, potential that should ideally carry on with this sort of magick. There is yet plenty of room to grow within this sound and no doubt they’re capable of even more, so, I’m stoked on this record as a promising introduction. A moderately high recommendation.

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