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SERENITUS
Tranquility In Insanity

Night Terrors / Desert Wastelands Productions (2025)
Rating: 8/10

Serenitus is a one man project sprouting from Inglewood, California. This death-doom affair is the creation of J.P. (aka James Papson) who crafted the debut album in his home studio and to be honest, it’s quite impressive.

After a steady instrumental intro of a traipsing riff and plodding drum the album gallops to life with ‘Cosmic Solitude’. The riff is meaty and catchy, emanating from an early-to-mid 90s style of deathly stodge. Vocally, J.P. is fully down into the guttural passages of his chest cavity, the result being a deep, phlegm-scraping set of commands of old school values. Even with the pacier numbers, there’s always that heavy layering of clay evident to bring the sound into low end territory.

‘Oizys’ Grasp’ lumbers with menace as the drums trudge like troops of doom through sucking mud. I just really like the tone of this album and as each track reveals itself further, dense layers can be explored. The title track brings bluster with its chunky yet busy riffage before slowing to something more cavernous.

Serenitus also sits comfortably in the modern death-doom scene, plying similar trades to a whole host of clay-caked bands. It’s heavy, clogged, although not necessarily sluggish but always provides a dense atmosphere, the epitome of such bludgeoning being the eight minute ‘Deep Rest’. Okay, so it takes an eternity to get going but when it does it’s up there with the likes of Sanctuarium for yawning sludge, although the change of pace is quite the surprise.

‘Hypnotic Scenery’ moans like traditional doom, especially with the mournful guitar tone and steady drum thuds. Further into the depths of the song there’s an almost majestic roll, like some great whale stirring black waves. It also shows just how good an artist J.P. is, because although he’s walking a well worn path he’s making his own impression, colossal footprints in fact and all in the name of death and doom.

Neil Arnold

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