From Germany, comes the Black Metal duo known as AMIMIA. Although they have only been around for a few years, this is their third full-length release. The album has six songs, and “Shedding” is first. It begins with very tense tones that grow…at first, they are a warning in the back of your mind, and they transition to something very real materializing in front of you. “Disintigration” has more solemn and depressing tones, almost as if the world is ending in a hailstorm of bombs and fire. The clean passages are just as devastating, and put a stamp on a landscape of absolute devastation. “Doomed” has a firmer backbone of guitars that create a thick wall of sound, but as the title suggests, it is all about death, destruction, or some other terrible fate.

The title track is longest on the album, and the deeply ominous sound continues, together with more solemn and even gentle tones. The contrasting styles reflects the complications and quagmires of the human experience for me, and they mix in keyboards and other elements to augments the hopeless sound. “Oda a la Miseria” hears the tide of misery take a turn for the better. But as with any virtue like hope, it has an uphill battle. It’s like a flower trying to rise from the frozen ground in the spring, as winter still clings. It manages to rise however, and bask in the sunlight. “Necronym” closes the album, with just a bit of absolution. Like Descartes said, however, an eternity of bliss does not make up for any suffering while on Earth. It’s one of the great conflicts of religion.

The unnamed war between hope and despair is fought across every measure, every slow-burning crescendo, every fading chord — and despair wins. It is a slow, inevitable tightening of the chest, leaving the listener stranded in the rubble of what might’ve been. It is the slow collapse of the scaffolding you didn’t know was holding you up. It is the sound of hope staying just long enough to remind you of what you're about to lose. When the silence finally arrives, it doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels earned.