���Album number three from this Bulgarian blackened doom duo further descends through the band's strikingly gorgeous symphonic heaviness, which for some reason continues to be overlooked by most in the metal underground. I just don't get it - Darkflight's previous 2008 album Perfectly Calm was one of the most massive, moving doom epics I've picked up in recent years, combining vast, exquisitely crafted melodies imbued with an almost cinematic scope, awash in swells of aural heartache and laced with progressive tendencies that were way more refined than most bands in the field. Not to mention, some of the heaviest doom ever. And this new one treads similar ground, radiating with that same sad, sumptuous sense of grandeur, the crushing slow-motion doomscape interwoven with wistful melodies and gorgeous bleary-eyed hooks that most shoegazer bands would hack an arm off for; there are moments on Closure that feel as though they could have been lifted right off of an Envy album, even.

��� True, the production is a little murkier and more low-fi this time around, but it still works for me, those sweeping orchestral elements (an array of synthesized strings, horns and woodwinds) that wash across the opening track "Worse Things Than Dying" becoming subsumed into the dense roiling heaviness, slow, ponderous drumming shifting into more frenetic rhythms as the duo builds into their dramatic eruptions. Multiple lead guitars are layered and intertwined throughout their songs, curling around the surging synths that swell into sweetly despondent orchestral pop over that crushing deathdoom, and more than once these captivating melancholic melodies come close to evoking some monstrous, blackened, deathdoom version of an Agalloch or Alcest. Scathing distant screams stretch far across the byzantium glow of the horizon, occasionally replaced with a gloomy half-spoken delivery that brings a heavy gothic feel to those moments, and violins and woodwinds, piano and acoustic guitars bloom into mournful gorgeous laments, joined by beautiful sorrowful guitar harmonies rising over the thunderous slow-mo crush. The eight songs coalesce into an overwhelmingly emotional blast of doleful doom-laden atmosphere, stunning orchestral gloompop fused to a monstrous monolithic doom-laden power that eventually makes its way to the gorgeous symphonic instrumental prog of the closing song "Limbo (Alive And Well)". Really, folks, give this stuff a listen.

��� Limited to five hundred copies.