Hooded Menace — Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration

Hooded Menace — Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration

Hooded Menace have done it again. With Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration, these Finnish death doom overlords prove they’re still at the bloody top of their game, twisting the genre into something both reverent and terrifyingly fresh. From the first melodies of “Twilight Passages”  you’re slammed into a neon lit nightmare where the rest of the album ensures Pekka Koskelo’s drums pounding like the gates of hell itself & Lasse Pyykkö’s riffs, as always, absolutely monstrous, bone crushing, yet hypnotic.

The album’s dark aesthetic is perfectly realized through Wes Benscoter’s cover art, echoing The Blind Dead with a grotesque majesty that feels entirely Hooded Menace. Tracks like “Pale Masquerade” and “Daughters of Lingering Pain” meld classic doom influences with ’80s metal theatrics, twisting Cathedral and King Diamond-esque spires into something far more sinister. Meanwhile, “Lugubrious Dance” bends perception with hypnotic, hallucinatory melodies, keeping the listener on edge with every shift in tempo.

Harri Kuokkanen’s vocals are guttural yet expressive, perfectly conveying the album’s themes of unlife, decay, and cursed eternity. Hooded Menace don’t just play death doom, they haunt it, shape it, and then drag it screaming into a new era. The inclusion of a reworked W.A.S.P. classic, “Save a Prayer,” is audacious and wildly effective, a testament to their confidence and skill.

Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration is a dark cathedral of sound — brutal, eerie, and impossibly compelling. If you thought death doom couldn’t be reinvented after all these years, Hooded Menace just told you to shove it, and I’m fucking grateful they did.