SOM - Let the Light In (2025)

SOM might be the band that made me interested in doomgaze as a genre. Their 2022's album The Shape of Everything really stuck with me and made me excited for the follow up. This came just two weeks ago in the shape (ha!) of the equally green and equally good album called Let the Light In.

High pace, complex music backgrounds and Jonas Bjerre-esque vocals is what characterizes the Americans. In their music, the "doom" part certainly doesn't refer to the speed in which the tracks go by and by. It's fast, there's a seducing flow, the compositions are catchy. The "doom" part is the heaviness of the music that contrasts so beautifully with the fragile, soft vocals that really make me think of Mew's airy madness. But what strikes me most is the ingenuity that is so well perceptible in the backgrounds. Everything that takes place under the vocals in Let the Light In, Chemicals or Give Blood is shockingly awesome.

The first part of the album feels certainly stronger. Maybe it's because this kind of intense music may tire the listener a bit with time. But still, it's one of the best bands of its kind out there and I can't wait for an opportunity to see them live somewhere out there.

Let the Light In costs 7.99 EUR.

Check: Chemicals 

Country: US

Genre: energetic doomgaze

Label: Pelagic Records

SOM - The Shape of Everything (2022)

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SOM - The Shape of Everything (2022)

The American band SOM debuted five years ago with The Fall but at the beginning of this year they managed to release an even better followup in the form of The Shape of Everything (pun intended). Their heavy blackgaze is dark and captivating, no wonder this is one of the more important heavy music albums of January.

The band's sound, already baptized as "doom pop", creates a post-metal, heavy-guitar-oriented atmosphere with delicate, dreamy vocals sitting on top. In this case, they very much remind me of Holy Fawn and this is a huge compliment. The balance between the crushingly loud music with guitar riffs that dominate the soundscapes and the ethereal, shoegazey type of delivery is most certainly difficult to achieve but the Americans do it very well. You can feel that the music is heavy and airy at the same time. The blackgaze walls of noise seem to close on the listener in each of the compositions, making them feel as massive as possible and as a shoegaze release should.

This gloomy atmosphere that resides on the album and constitutes the core force behind its might, comes from observing the reality around us. Unfortunately, it usually brings darker inspirations as the band used "the darkness of recent times to create and heal". This blissful sound surely has some healing properties.

The Shape of Everything costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Son of Winter

Country: US

Genre: airy doomgaze

Label: Pelagic Records

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