ETERNAL, (The) The Sombre Light Of Isolation (2004) CD

Australian gothic doom is a quieter chapter in this country's heavy music history, but it's a real one, and The Eternal were among the handful of acts doing it with genuine conviction in the early 2000s. The Sombre Light of Isolation came out in 2004 and holds up as one of the more honest documents of that era in the local dark alternative scene.

Melbourne's underground has always had its doom contingent, the people who showed up to gigs in long coats and stayed for the whole set without moving much, and this record was made for them. Cathedral-slow tempos, clean and growled vocals trading off against each other, and a production that feels appropriately subterranean without being unlistenable. There's a gothic sensibility here that owes as much to the English doom tradition as it does to death metal, which puts it somewhere in the vicinity of Anathema's mid-period and the more melodic end of Paradise Lost. Australian made and genuinely worth having if you care about local heavy music history.

2004 CD pressing. Australian release. Fans of: Anathema, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Daylight Dies.