Hooded Menace – Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration
Release Date: 3rd October 2025
Label: Season of Mist
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Doom Metal, Death Doom.
FFO: Paradise Lost, Mercyful Fate, Candlemass, Temple of Void, Autopsy, Incantation, Necrot, My Dying Bride.
Review By: Rick Farley
“For closing in on two decades, Hooded Menace have stood not as a bridge but the pillar between tow underground realms. The bands upcoming seventh album still paves the way for metal legions who prefer headbanging to more creepily, crushing tempos. However, while Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration is still rooted in a cultish obsession with the classics, these stewards of death-doom remain far from stuck in their ways.”
Finland’s Hooded Menace, the premier underground death-doom stewards, have been terrorizing headbangers since 2007 with their horror filled, swaggering metal riffed approach to crushing death metal chugs and lumbering doomy atmosphere. Dripping in traditional metal qualities, Hooded Menace are far more musically than just a wall of distortion coming in slow waves, pounding your bones to dust. There are legit heavy metal hooks and ripping solos here that take the doomy structure and flips it upside down, so that when you’re being pummelled to death with colossal heaviness, you’re damn well going to remember it. Slow to mid-paced atmospheric chuggers on the verge of snapping necks, causing involuntary body movement and sudden attacks of pit violence filled with catchy riffs, sorrowful melodies, and cavernous brutality. Yes.
The genius of Hooded Menace is their ability to write compelling songs that traverse a number of genres through a focused sense of harrowing structure without ever weighing the listener down. Bone crunching, dragging heaviness mixed with eerie beauty and haunting darkness are never overdone, leaving the listener with suspenseful grandeur that engages your senses as well as bulldozes the entire planet. Their crawling slither towards a stronger heavy metal approach on The Tritonus Bell was well received, and the band hammers the 80s metal influence even harder on Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration making it more digestible without sacrificing anything that’s made Hooded Menace the death-doom beast that they are. This record is no less heavy, brutal, or ominous, but it really lands the crunchy groove of the riffs and melodies much in the same way a band like older Paradise Lost does. The band never afraid to evolve, doesn’t necessarily come out of the gate bashing you over the head with its groundbreaking new sound, I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. What it does do, is strengthen the songwriting with extraordinary traditional appeal, it’s energetic and upbeat in an old school way while still being horror filled gloominess and crushing, spiralling death-doom.
Tracks like Pale Masquerade lumbers with its heavy groove like a mountainous beast traveling through the muck. Musically, King Diamond influence flourishes are all over without ever hitting one high vocal note. All gravel toned growls take this track further into the terrifying depths of the unknown, while the synths in the background are chilling. Portrait Without a Face ramp up the gloomy atmosphere with nerve induced eerie melodies and booming heaviness. Both tracks mark a shift in melodic sound that may trigger older fans who were leary of the direction that The Tritonus Bell took, but honestly this album will assuredly please more than not as well as lot of newer fans too. Hooded Menace are already criminally underappreciated, so hopefully more people start paying better attention. Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration even comes with an unexpected cover song of Duran Durans’s Save a Prayer. It’s placed one song before the closing track, so it’s clearly meant to be a part of the album and not just an afterthought. Shockingly it works incredibly well, fitting the record like a crunchy riffed, goth tinged, darkly haunting classic. If you’re unaware of the song, you would be hard-pressed to even know it’s a cover.
Production is warm and ungodly heavy, songwriting is next level, musicianship is smooth and effortless, the entire record is memorable and leaves an impact that you’ll want to revisit over and over again, which puts Hooded Menace leagues above most bands representing this genre. Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration should be the album that pushes them to the forefront. Easy recommend.
(4 / 5)
