DOMHAIN - In Perfect Stillness

Even though the last two decades have produced some excellent UK acts working in atmospheric black metal (the Mancunian Winterfylleth) or pagan-folk territory (the Scottish Saor), few would have expected a top-tier proposal to emerge from Belfast, Northern Ireland. The exception that proves the rule is this band, Domhain, who already released a mini-album titled "Nimue" back in 2023 (again via These Hands Melt, the highly active Italian underground label).

The distinctive trait of "In Perfect Stillness" lies in its unpredictable songwriting, as changeable as the Northern sky: across the seven minutes of "Talamh Lom" almost anything can happen, as the evocative post-black metal that opens the track (complete with overlapping male and female clean vocals) soon takes on the shape of a gentle ethereal passage (the cello resurfaces often throughout the album), before a memorable screaming outburst backed by a classic blackgaze crescendo. Once the track ends, the only thing to do is start it again from the beginning, to absorb every nuance with even greater intensity. Right down to the bone.

"Footsteps II", on the other hand, largely sets aside the harsher moments to make room for a long walk through the Irish hills. A path that Henry David Thoreau or the standard-bearers Agalloch might have walked, had they been born on the other side of the Atlantic. It's a composition in which, once again, many musical souls coexist, and where the calm suddenly shatters into mud, recalling the more recent Primordial.

Despite the title, perfect stillness is nowhere to be found within the notes of the title track, another key piece built on the constant interplay between Andy Ennis's voice and that of Anaïs Chareyre-Méjan (of French origin). Here the initial storm slowly takes on the shape of a dramatic, imperious, solemn event. Grey blends into blue. We brace ourselves for the closing catharsis, "My Tomb Beneath The Tide", grandiose (in its choruses) as well as melodic, the glorious wait for an inevitable ending ("here I will lay on the shore of the ancient sea").

From now on, in the more forward-thinking black metal circles, people will be talking about Domhain too, because "In Perfect Stillness" brands this first stretch of the season with fire.

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23/02/2026