Bloomed from meditations on the transitory nature of life into a seeming endless chasmic pouring of anxietous despair this debut full-length album from Varese, Italy-based droning atmospheric black/doom metal quartet DWELLNOUGHT depicts a human psyche terrorized in passage toward non-existence. A skull-taxing horror set to deform the boundaries of sub-genre with “noise” and tension-wracked instrumentation ‘Monolith of Ephemerality‘ offers an echoic purgation of their cult’s transcendence toward dimensions of distress both imagined and endured. Through extreme metal’s most fringe-and-flailing countenance their angle upon admixture of black, death and (extreme) doom metal muse speaks to the core-shaking realms of existential dread via cavernous animalistic means making for an erratic trial of the mind’s rawest senses.

Dwellnought formed just a few years ago in 2023 by way of folks who’re potentially known names in the Italian extreme metal scenery of late but’ve chosen to remain nameless nonetheless. In live photos they can be seen wielding eight string guitars, six string basses and generally resembling drone activists, amplifier worshippers and such. The first partial glimpse of their ‘scape-craft was a rehearsal demo (‘The Final Desire is Unbeing‘, 2025) two despairing drone-fed jams where slow-rolling death/doom metal was given heightened atmospheric dread and made long-form via atmospheric black metal progressions boring out from within. That initial work recalled something like an atmoblack version of Grave Upheaval or Charnel Altar but framed by a dissociative, wilting psyche rather than ancient daemonic summon. This debut full-length naturally expands upon those ideas while emphasizing their use of synth, harsher droning ebb and sound collage to extend the atmospheric drain of their work and… almost to the point of drowning out the impact of the riff as core feature entirely.

The bookending of ‘Monolith of Ephemerality‘ with noxious, tense noise-scaping has some notable effect upon its tone as opening/introductory piece “Slumbering through the Dream of Impermanence” essentially tunes up, grinding out anticipatory siege noise before the opener (“The Final Desire is Unbeing”) provides a reinvention of the piece demoed on their rehearsal. Familiar as some moments are it is probably the one piece which upholds that sense of atmospheric black metal hover noted earlier in this well-evolved ~17 minute form, given space by a mid-piece dark ambient/noise shrug-down before ejecting into a dissonance, blackened death collapse. Long and taxing as this piece is it ends up being a grand entrance for the band, a formidable rant in any case.

“Crystalized Flesh Identities Condensed Into Wombs of Matter” is where we begin to see their work expand beyond Penderecki-like (or, Portal-esque) swells of thousand-clawed derangement and draining light toward something more technical, math-metallic skronking and perhaps partially improvised movements writ into place. For my own taste this is where ‘Monolith of Ephemerality‘ breaks away from expectations of form while still resembling the unsettling, unreal atmosphere of the full listen in a nutshell. Beyond that point “Ill Whispers” is the most doom-coded, or death-doom adjacent piece of the lot here resembling some of what we’d found on the (previously) split apart “The Final Desire is Unbeing”, lending some continuity with that songs complete version found over on Side A. Shambling atmospheric death metal ingress, deep-set and full chested growls reinforce the imposing roar of “Ill Whispers” but the broken and creaking guitar tones which thunder atop are the blood of the action. I’d particularly appreciated the anxietous scrabbling of the riffs and distorted bass found around ~7:25 minutes in, one of the most effective use of avant-black warbling guitar work to generate a mood swing in effect.

Strongly immersive atmospheric values and caustic-cast instrumentation make for an effectively uneasy, ugly extreme metal experience as ‘Monolith of Ephemerality‘ first overtakes the senses then erodes them. With this in mind I did not find the full listen particularly addictive, repeatable and such beyond sorting out its ambitious reach and affected voice. What it conveys is potent enough that it escapes any sense of pleasurable reactivity but in exchange the whole affair remains compelling for its intended evocation. This suits Dwellnought‘s obscure mission statement and suggested niche well while leaving room for both refinement and further abstraction. A moderately high recommendation.

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