For once, the song and video we’re premiering today are incredibly simple to describe. Suicide Season are Bruno Silva and Nuno Lima, a U.K.-based duo with roots in the Portuguese underground (including personal history with the some of country’s best doom and death metal bands, namely Heavenwood and Dementia 13 among others), and they play the kind of crushing doom metal that will take your heart and stomp on it slowly, mercilessly and methodically while also tragically weeping about it. And that’s pretty much it. In terms of imagery, we get a sort of a lyric video, with some evocative images and close-ups going by, but essentially very little else to distract you from the relentless, overwhelming gray misery. It’s a song called “Harrowing Torment,” so it really does what it says on the tin.
Thing is, it works. It works really well. As with other single-minded purveyors of colorless agony before them, Suicide Season’s approach does get to you in the end, and the tortuous intensity of the feelings manifested with this music becomes absolutely undeniable. To add a little more spice to it, this is also the very first time we get a proper piece of music from this band. Their label Alone Records has been keeping things very much under wraps since the band signed with them a few months ago, revealing only a couple of short teasers, but this is the first full song made public. For now, we know that the debut album will be called Life, But In Reverse… and it’s scheduled for April 5. Pre-orders and more detailed info will be available next week through Alone Records’ and the band’s own channels.
“We have been fans of doom and death metal all our lives,” Nuno admits without any kind of surprise whatsoever. “Our influences go from My Dying Bride to Paradise Lost, Saturnus, Anathema, Edge Of Sanity, Shape Of Despair, and many more. Basically we made an album of music that we are passionate about, with the essence of both of us in it, because it is what makes sense. ‘Harrowing Torment’ is the first track and it starts the album in a very powerful way. It’s a song that focuses on three main emotions – despair, hopelessness and heartbreak.”