The Metal Temple screws are letting me off this week with a one-track release by Post-Apocalyptic Doom Metal artist OMINATION (2016). Begun in March and released on May 1, that one track - the COVID-19 inspired "The Pale Horseman", clocks in at over 26 minutes - wow. The artist bio on Bandcamp lists Tunis, Tunisia in North Africa as home for Fedor Kovalevsky, the main man that does it all - guitars, vocals, bass, percussion, sequencing and production. This is some bleak dirge, mates - Funeral Doom Death Metal. As I started this "The Pale Horseman"review, my Post-Apocalyptic hangover necessitated various attempts at a thorough listen of this epic track, but I think I got it scooped.
Hiding from the divine, your end is near...Fear, drown in fear... The pale horseman is here...

The first few piano notes of "The Pale Horseman" are mixed so low that I think the bleeping heartbeat accents is a car alert signaling an open door out in the street, then the piano string timbres eclipse followed by a molten guitar line spun over a pipe organ background patch. Fedor Kovalevsky's vocals drop in his native Russian mixed with English and blotted with growling deathrider groans spanning over a minor key church organ aria, the pipe organ dirge a constant sanguinary stalker in the song. The guitar is liquid lava, delayed and soaked in reverb, slow and hot enough to cut thunder.

Cleansing the filth from our world to his hands ... Strangling randomly the poor and the innocent...Forging ahead towards the 12 minute mark we get a tense buildup and quickened pacing before an exhausted cascade of music sliding and stuttering over the edge into a pool of dark ambient rouge. Fedor knows how to apply reverb across his vocals and these doom helix tracks, just stopping short of SIGUR RÓS convolutions while the funereal marching hangs onto the mystic and spiritual more than the supernatural and diabolic detail - unless your idear of spiritual is Shayāṭīn and that is a writing upon itself.

Ending all kingdoms and shattered lands ... Bringing tears to the vile and the innocent...At 16 minutes we get beat blasted and battered by a speed metal treatment and some lovely keyboards buried down low in the mix. Nice job. The 20 minute marker renders a sanguine lyrical guitar passage while Fedor returns again to his devout Russian incantation intoned over female vocal chants supplied by Camilia Daoulette. At the 24 minute mark the groove drops into a sustaining double bass sequence pounding out oblivion to infinity.

Slowly drown in despair ... Demise of all belief ... Crowned in anguish and prayer ... Surrounded by grief ...Hiding from the divine, your end is near ... Fear, drown in fear ... The pale horseman is here. I have listened to funeral doom music like this, and the shared heavy metal bits are familiar. At over 26 minutes, the scope of this song is truly impressive and the song never gets bogged down under its own weight and manages to not disappear up its own downhole. Fedor Kovalevsky is prolific with this project OMINATION and other facets of the genre. Be sure to dig the release artwork "The Vision of Death" taken from French artist Gustave Doré, which is available on a band t-shirt. Bloody good show Fedor and send me a shirt¡!

The blood surges in our veins, We die for the sake of our land. Let the heavens roar with thunder. Let thunderbolts rain with fire.

Let us share to the Spotify list of dani bandolier  ... Господи, помилуй

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/272H3UBARsuksY3BqU0CzP?si=wvLMeHidQOSBq3VZuKtmJg