RED HOT TRACK OF THE WEEK: MOTHER OF GRAVES

Song

Shatter The Visage

Artist

Mother of Graves

Mother of Graves backstory

Emerging from Indianapolis in 2019, Mother of Graves turned heads with their deeply personal, richly textured metalworks. 2022’s Where the Shadows Adorn was an astonishing debut and along with the likes of Dream Unending and Worm, the quintet helped to usher in an exciting new era for death doom, sculpting towering edifices of sonic grandeur as they went.

The band have been quick to build on that momentum, with their second full-length, The Periapt of Absence, due to land this autumn.

Shatter The Visage is the second single to be taken from that album, following the release of Upon Burdened Hands in August.

In the words of vocalist/keyboardist Brandon Howe…

“Shatter The Visage was written at a time of tested sanity. I was frozen, I guess you could say, in a purgatory between holding onto my hopes or letting go, and every road seemed to lead me to a further descent.

“It’s wild the things that soar through your head when you’re at your lowest and can’t seem to face the emotional crossroads at hand. It is our most aggressive track on the record. It reeks with intensity and catchiness, and it showcases our collective roots in death metal while maintaining our melodic and doleful identity.”

The verdict on Shatter The Visage

Anchored in gloom but tinted with moments of genuine beauty, Shatter The Visage is exactly what we’ve come to expect from Mother of Graves: intelligently arranged and superbly crafted death doom that owes a debt to Paradise Lost, Katatonia and Edge of Sanity, yet takes its own path.

And that path becomes ever more progressive as Shatter The Visage evolves into a glistening cascade of sparkling guitars, before returning to source.

The Periapt of Absence could be very special indeed, if this track – and the last single are – anything to go by.