EP Review: Strings Of Distorted Doom "Doom Trials" (Independent) by Dave Wolff

Band: Strings Of Distorted Doom

Location: Lagrangeville, New York

Country: USA

Genre: Black metal

EP: Doom Trials

Format: Digital album

Label: Independent

Release date: May 27, 2021

This New York-based black metal band seems to have been a closely guarded secret for many years, and in some ways, this could be fortunate for most fans of extreme music. Not content to floor you with excessive blast and searing guitars, they seek to reach into the deepest recesses of your mind, tear your consciousness out and shred it before your eyes. Strings of Distorted Doom released a series of demos, EPs, and splits from 2010 to 2012, then entered a nine-year period of inactivity that lasted until “Doom Trials” came out last month.  This is a sample EP with a handful of songs to be included on a full-length due out this summer. People who are generally put off by extreme music will likely run screaming in terror and hiding under their beds to avoid the mental impact their latest EP “Doom Trials” could exert on them. This band is not a bunch of suburban brats trying to annoy their families, but like USBM artists Darkness Enshroud, Black Funeral, Vrolok, and Leviathan, they seek to capture the musical equivalent of pure evil, despair, desolation, and madness, something that has been significantly absent in black metal since it broke aboveground in the 2000s. The truth is we need bands like this to remind us of the genre’s true nature, its roots in raw, harsh, hostile, and malign perverted malefaction. Personally, I found it refreshing to experience black metal of this caliber after such a long time. “Doom Trials” represents what black metal was intended to be in the late 80s and early 90s: meant for just a select few musical degenerates who fully understand the point this band set out to make, with lyrics celebrating isolation from the outside world and depicting an irreversible dismantling of the human mind. It treats the black metal genre with complete respect and veneration while being comparable to the soundtrack to sanity dying. –Dave Wolff

Lineup:

Dan: Vocals

C: Guitar, bass, vocals, drum tracks

Track list:

1. Cabin In The Woods (EP version)

2. Buried In Blood (EP version)

3. Dead Lights (2011 version)