CONVOCATION - No Dawn For The Caliginous Night Digi-CD

4-panels DigipakCD with folded miniposter.

The cover art of Convocation’s third album refers to one of the difficulties of this sort of amorphous funeral doom death - sometimes it’s all shadows and clouds with nothing concrete behind it. Moreover, the album features ‘Between Aether and Land’ as its shortest track, a title that may well be a nod to another Finnish funeral act in Skepticism, for whom the term “aether” or “ethere” has some history, and also sums up their ephemeral quality. In a similar manner to Skepticism’s development, Convocation broaden their palette again on No Dawn for the Caliginous Night to take in organ and synth alongside the noticeable presence of cello. Certain parts of the release thus float along in delicate fashion, aided by some clean vocals from guest performers, though prolonged death metal rumbles appear on ‘Lepers and Derelicts’ in particular.

The 5 track listen resembles more of an emotional than a physical journey, and though arduous and threatening at times it sheds rays of light at others. The long denouement to ‘Procession’ brings the album to a cinematic climax, which will definitely resonate more with fans of atmospheric metal than pure heaviness, and despite the album title brings a kind of dawn to the darkness. As such, this fits much more easily into the paradigm of funeral doom than Convocation’s previous releases, not to mention providing more of a narrative arc than Ashes Coalesce. As these Finns calm down and the pieces settle, they seem to be growing in strength and storytelling skill.