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HOODED MENACE
Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration

Season Of Mist (2025)
Rating: 7.5/10

Getting more unorthodox with each release, this latest opus from Finland’s Hooded Menace tests my patience somewhat, and not just with the cover rendition of Duran Duran’s 1982 pop classic ‘Save A Prayer’. I feel that with Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration we are hearing a band caught in-between, somehow transitioning forever more through a musical limbo that never quite sits right.

This new album – the seventh full-length from the band – comes adorned in nostalgic cover art which reminds me of the 1977 cult classic children’s book The World Of The Unknown: Ghosts. Equipped with a synth horror intro and six lengthy cuts, this album still serves up the death n’ doom malevolence we’ve come to expect from the trio. This time though the morbid mob entices us with a sound that sits somehow between early 90s doom metal and Mercyful Fate. Maybe it’s this intriguing mix which makes the album feel patchy, but Hooded Menace pack so much into each song that you can’t say you’re not getting your money’s worth even if the tracks do tend to drag.

The ringleader here is mad axe man Lasse Pyykkö who provides a feast of styles whether in the form of traditional metal licks or Cathedral-esque crushings. In fact, a few times throughout this album I hear shades of Cathedral alongside early Paradise Lost with the heavyweight drags often juxtaposed by melodic moments of some subtlety. However, the mammoth riffs slither and throb in their element on those lengthy cuts; great rolling slabs of gloom. Case in point is ‘Pale Masquerade’ which somehow pits Icon-era Paradise Lost with Deceased and King Diamond – an intriguing mix which actually works.

It’s very interesting how the band marries the expected doom riffs with the Gothic streaks, especially the flecks of cello with ‘Portrait Without A Face’. ‘Lugubrious Dance’ also brings atmospheric elements within the doom, the vocals very much in that chesty Nick Holmes (Paradise Lost) style as the expansive closer ‘Into Haunted Oblivion’ sizzles with excellent lead work which rises from the thick plumes of smoke. Okay, so the cover of Duran Duran’s ‘Save A Prayer’ isn’t actually that bad at all, but it does sum up the uneven nature of an album that is obviously trying to do something a bit different.

I do think most Hooded Menace fans will like and appreciate the diversity here. It’s still very much deathly and doomy, but it also requires your focus much more than previous outings. From here on in one can only guess as to what creative pathways the band will take, but Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration is certainly the start of a new chapter.

Neil Arnold

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