BEHOLDER'S CULT is a Brazilian Gothic doom band.  In 2018, they released their first ep "Cult of Solitude."  "Our Darkest Home," is their full length debut album. While this is by no means a terrible album, I found it to be just an average one instead.  I listened to "Our Darkest Home," so many times in effort to let it pull me into its Gothic webs but it just never happened.

That isn't to say the album doesn't contain any good elements. Felipe Stock has unique clean vocals and decent growls/screams but they also don't sound very powerful.  Although he sounds good, the vocals are delivered with a whimper more than a bang.  The album's flat production doesn't help anything sound very exciting either.  Every thing is clear and concise sound wise but it also comes off as a pain by numbers production job—it just sounds bored.

The song's are layered well and that is the best element on "Our Darkest Home." Unfortunately, it is also the worst. From my experience with this album, it seems like the band spent so much time and effort putting these songs together that they forgot to make them interesting.

None of the song's nine tracks are bad songs—and there isn't any moment within the forty eight minute run time that I would say is objectively terrible.  But, at the same time, there isn't anything that stands out.  I enjoyed the album when I was listening to it but after I was done, I could think of very little moments that stood out in my mind that made me want to go back.  It got to the point where I listened to it because I needed to review it, rather than actually wanting to listen to it.

"Samara," opens the track as in instrumental intro but it does flow into the next track well and is a nice set up.  The first proper track, "Shadows," exemplifies many of the good and bad things about the album as a whole. By the time the song kicks in around the one minute mark, there are many layers to it and much is going on.  Clean keyboards, melodic bass, solid rhythm guitar, vocals, and crisp drumming are swirl together but isn't a mess but rather an example of compositional skill.  However, like I said earlier, nothing really stands out to me.  Around the 4:25, death growls appear and give the song some edge but they don't have much power to them and sound somewhat weak.

"Crestfallen," nails down the melodic doom/Gothic tone from the early 90's but, yet again, there isn't one element or moment that calls for me to listen to it again and again.  The overlapping of the cleans and growls is actually off putting and the album would be better if one vocal style at a time would be used. "Conceiving Silence," is one of the few times the album is catchy—the chorus is very well done. The rest of the songs just seems like standard Gothic doom that hits all the right notes but doesn't excel at any of them.  At this point, it is obvious this album is the audio representation of the phrase "jack of all trades but master of none."

"Weight of the Sun," is one of the better tracks because it is the most crushing song that full utilizes the density of the guitars.  The death growls seem to be louder in the mix and a bit more forceful too but interjection of cleans pulls me out of the moment.

The final track "Empty Inside," ends the album with a well balanced song that melds lighter moments with heavier emotions.  But still as the last track it doesn't really reach any grandiose moments to end it all with a bang. All in all "Our Darkest Home," isn't a bad album but it definitely lacks energy and more ear catching moments.