A terrific debut from this French deathdoom band, Fatum Elisum's self-titled disc was originally self released by the band, but ended up getting picked up by the doom metal powerhouse Aesthetic Death, who recognized the miserable brilliance of this album. Mixing in elements of suicidal blackness and dank dungeon-swelling death metal, as well as some of the craziest vocals I've heard from a doom metal singer lately, these guys have come out with an oppressive, twisted deathdoom monstrosity that'll have fans of both Silentist and Deinonychus reaching for the volume knob to crank it up (or reaching for the razorblade, whichever is closer...).

The album begins with a short intro called "Eli Eli", where deep choral voices drone behind the deep, gothic croon of singer EndE, who repeatedly intones the psalm "Eli Eli lama sabachthani?" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") right before the whole band crashes in with the pulverizing deathdoom of "In Vain". It's a sound that I've heard before, but these guys do it really well, stringing deep rumbling drones and morose leads across the bleak downtuned riffing, shifting into more frantic sections of double bass fury and chunkier riffing, never getting too fast, but moving back and forth between the miserable heart-wrenching doom and the pummeling slow-motion death metal; later in the song, we start to hear sections where the band drops out completely and there's just a single clean guitar playing a hushed minimal minor key piece alongside Ende's slow, emotive croon, creating a passage of somber quietude that makes the doom so much more intense when the band crashes back in with huge chugging riffs and half-time double bass. And then abruptly, the sound shifts into a frenzied death metal assault from out of nowhere, blastbeat drums and blackened riffing, a speedy old school blast of monstrous DM that just as quickly segues back into the melancholy doom riff from the beginning of the song, only now it's even more sorrowful and majestic, closing the song with a flourish of grim melodic deathdoom. Their grasp of deathdoom dynamics and knack for some seriously punishing riffage makes Fatum Elisum one of the best new deathdoom bands that I've come across, incredibly bleak and crushing, but with some fucking awesome melodic guitar parts and a couple of rad left-turns that keep thie album from getting monotonous, like the aforementioned blast of putrid death metal, or the searing bluesy soloing at the end of "Phantom", or the strange sounding combination of old school doom groove, mid-paced black metal, and deep hymn-like singing on the title track. The deep, crooning voice of singer Ende is a large part of Fatum Elisum's sonic personality, too; he breaks out into a deep, guttural bellow that's as ogrish as any deathdoom frontman, but he tends to stick with that dramatic vocal style that sounds like he's actually singing ancient church music, an interesting vocal approach that works well with their dismal doominess, and there's also a couple of spots where EndE's voice turns into a high pitched wail of anguish that's almost like that of Nattramn from Silencer! A grim and grinding slab of ultraheavy liturgical deathdoom and depressive suffering that fits in between the suicidal doom of Ataraxie, Bethlehem, and Evoken, and the more classic melodic deathdoom of My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. And like almost everything else on Aesthetic Death, highly recommended to fans of extreme doom.