It's always interesting to explore new bands from different countries and more so from your neighbouring countries. Though I have had a chance to listen to and watch live a few bands from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, I had never taken Metal bands from Pakistan seriously enough. Few weeks back I was asked to review this album by the Guitarist Sheraz Ahmed. So I gave it a shot as Death Doom has always kept me interested with its thick lazy riffs. DIONYSUS in a literal sense means "a God of the grape harvest, winemaking and ecstasy" according to the Greek mythology. The grapes fan that I am had a feeling that this album would give me that sweet sour taste at the end of it.

Starting of with a beautiful soothing acoustic number "Glimpse of the beloved", the album goes into a heavy mode with the long 9 and half minute "Valor of the Phoenix" surprising the listener. Though long songs are the unwritten rule in Doom Metal, very few bands are able to keep the moment and variety throughout the song, and DIONYSUS surely does, with its thick juicy riffs forcing the listener to head bang. The riffs here are innovative and sound old school and do not sound repetitive unlike most bands end up sounding. The song travels different tempos of ups and downs throughout the song keeping the listener engrossed and the Black Metal influence of the band is most visible here in the song. I have to mention that both the first 2 songs make use of Flute, Synths and Violin brought in by Rauhan Lasharie, adding variety and flavour to the songs. "Burial Ground" has to be one of the best Doom Metal song that I must have heard in recent times, especially due to the crying guitar riffs, with the musicians bringing the best of themselves in this song, its clearly visible that DIONYSUS means business and take their craft seriously. "Bathing in unholy blood" is a faster paced song for the most part and again has Black Metal influences in the first half of the song, though it shifts to mid and low tempo in parts, thus bringing enough variety as is throughout the album. The album ends with a mid tempo song in "Angels of heaving light", where the most notable mention has to be change in the vocals between the whispering vocals in the beginning and then the growling Death vocals in later stages of the song, with slow guitars and low tempo drums in the back ground finishing off the album.

The guitars and drums are constantly shifting between mid tempo and high tempo, giving lots of variety and flavour to the album as mention earlier here. The drums though are of the drum computer, do not sound monotonous and unidirectional. The bass does a commendable job, though nothing noteworthy. While the lyrics speak about desperation, death and the nature around us, the production is kept old school as is with most albums in this genre, but is good enough for even the faster riffs to sound clear enough to the listener. While it's an easy-on-the-ears albums as it has only 5 songs, A HYMN TO THE DYING packs enough in its 28:48 minutes to keep the listener engrossed and is sure to impress the Death / Doom connoisseurs and I just hope Pakistan continuous to bring such quality albums surprising everybody across the globe. Released two years ago, though I'm late, I'm glad to have come across this album.