heavy-metal-darkness: Hooded Menace | Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration

Sunday, October 26, 2025

Hooded Menace | Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration | Season Of Mist

Release Date: 3 October 2025

Format: Digital, CD, LP

Genre: Death/Doom Metal

Country: Finland

For nearly twenty years, Hooded Menace has prowled the graveyards of death-doom like eternal sentinels. Formed in 2007 by guitarist and songwriter Lasse Pyykkö, the Finnish trio grew out of his teenage obsession with horror flicks, worn VHS covers, and the suffocating heaviness of the early doom and death metal underground. From the cult beginnings of “Tombs Of The Blind Dead” to the crushing “Never Cross The Dead” and later the gothic darkness of “Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed”, Hooded Menace has built a world of slow decay and haunted grandeur.

Their seventh album, “Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration”, arrives like a funeral procession crawling through thick fog. The guitars rumble with massive, sepulchral heaviness, but the production keeps everything vivid and alive. The first seconds of “Twilight Passages” open a portal into that cryptic world, where melody and menace share the same coffin. When “Pale Masquerade” unfolds, it’s pure Hooded Menace; ominous, dramatic, and soaked in horror imagery. Harri Kuokkanen’s vocals sound less like growls and more like a ghoul sermon, echoing through catacombs.

There’s a striking theatrical quality running through the whole album. “Portrait Without A Face” and “Daughters Of Lingering Pain” move with a dreadful beauty, the riffs shifting like shadows against a dying candle. The presence of cello and subtle keys deepens the atmosphere without stealing the heaviness. The production by Heikki Marttila gives space to every layer, and the mastering by Jaime Gomez Arellano adds depth to the cryptic gloom.

By the time “Lugubrious Dance” and “Into Haunted Oblivion” close the ritual, the band sounds like they’re resurrecting the ghosts of Cathedral and Candlemass through their own plague-ridden lens. There’s a thick, old-school metal pulse buried inside these songs that keeps the album from sinking into pure despair. The unexpected cover of Duran Duran’s “Save A Prayer” is exactly the kind of unholy trick Hooded Menace pull off with style, turning a pop classic into a hymn for the dead.

This is death/doom made with vision and soul. Hooded Menace doesn’t need to chase trends; they summon them to the grave instead. “Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration” is heavy in every sense, musically, atmospherically, spiritually. That’s is death/doom where riffs claw at your spine and the rhythm section moves like a slow-motion guillotine. Hooded Menace once again prove that horror and heaviness belong together when crafted with such force. The tomb remains open, and its echo is glorious.

Score: 8.5