The Bleak Picture – Shades of Life
Release Date: 27th June 2025
Label: Ardua Music
Bandcamp
Genre: Melodic Doom Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Doom Metal, Death Metal.
FFO: Paradise Lost, Moonspell, Katatonia, Fields of the Nephilim, Insomnium, Swallow the Sun, Autumnfall.
Review By: Rick Farley
“There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.”
– Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Released June 27th, 2025, via Ardua Music, Shades of Life is an emotionally heavy album full of Finnish melodic death/doom. Since 2021 the creative partnership of vocalist Ruohonen (Autumnfall, Temple of Kliffoth) and multi-instrumentalist Jussi Hänninen (Autumnfall, ex-Fall of the Leafe) have been working together under the banner of The Bleak Picture. Combining the atmospheric misery of doom, the crushing chugginess of death metal and the stunning melodicism of both genres melded together with superb flourishes of English goth rock, the band creates a world enriched with enchanting gloom and immense heaviness.
Their dreamlike, doomy journey began with the 2022 EP Songs of Longing and then expanded into a brutish, dystopian, atmospheric look into the depths of the abyss with their full length debut album Meaningless in 2024. Now in 2025, the duo known as The Bleak Picture with album number two lumbering through the void, they look to haunt your soul with their colossal brand of melancholic death/doom.
The tracks on Shades of Life seem more refined and have a less brutal touch so to speak than on Meaningless. That’s not to say this album is less heavy, it’s definitely not, it just seems less abrasive and has a deeper maturity level to its haunting weightiness. It’s still mammoth waves of guitars, harsh vocals, spoken word, and beautiful darkness wrapped up in a gothic fluttering of ever flowing sorrow. Track two Absolution is a fitting example of how heaviness is not always just in your face aggression. Those buzzing guitars, thick low end and tribalistic drums are here, but with a wide open, airy, otherworldly aura that lingers freely throughout the track. Deeply ingrained in feeling that gets under your skin in a way that still feels warm and inviting but with deep anguish. While Circular Reflection starts with a melancholic clean guitar passage, it does expand itself into a muscular chug of distortion and doom. Even in its guitar centric heaviness, there’s a real sense of mystical captivation. Silent Exit has a more outwardly sinister feel to it, adding a haunting desolation to the ever moving, organic soundscape.
Shades of Life is a record that’s meant to be heard from beginning to end to get the entire story. Inspiring melodies that sing to your heart and soul, while you can feel its sorrow deep in your bones. It’s harsh, yet beautiful, morose yet full of life. A shade in the illuminating dark.
A warm but dense production and a streamlined approach to songwriting makes this album easy to digest. It sits at 45 minutes and doesn’t feel overly long. I will say, though, that a couple of songs do seem to carry on just a tad longer than they need too, but that kind of goes with the territory. A bit of a nitpicky thing, considering this is a really solid record that scratches that death/doom itch and then some. Easy recommend.
(4 / 5)
