DOMHAIN – In Perfect Stillness

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8.0

• Bands:
  DOMHAIN
• Duration: 00:35:17
• Available from: 02/20/2026
• Label:

• These Hands Melt

Streaming not yet available

Domhain's is a proposal that belongs to a special category, that of timeless music.
Straddling the old and the new, the Belfast quartet fascinates and enchants with delicate vocal harmonies and deep, vibrant cello notes, perfectly inserted into a musical plot woven with care and precision and also made up of blast-beats, scream singing and distorted and reverberated electric guitars.
We are between at least three ways of understanding black metal, distinguishable but absolutely contiguous, also because they are the result of the evolution of the genre itself: the atmospheric one, which has its roots in the nineties, in the masterpieces “Bergtatt – Et Eeventyr I 5 Capitler” by Ulver and “Heart Of The Ages” by In The Woods, the eclectic and widely contaminated black metal of the early 2000s by Agalloch and finally the slightly more recent blackgaze, shaped mainly by Alcest since 2005.
Three ways of dealing with the same subject, but also three approaches whose differences sometimes become imperceptible, so much so that the scheme just presented can only be approximate and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt. But at the same time it can help to better understand the various evolutions of this musical genre, its further branches and the soil on which they spread: from Norway to the United States and then back to Europe, France, but also Northern Ireland, with these Domhain, who find their chosen terrain in a particular amalgam of black metal, indebted both to the classics and to more recent realities.

A certain commonality, not only geographical, with Primordial can be found throughout the album, particularly in the drum backbeats, although Nemtheanga's band appears far more combative; there are also some traits in common with the other Irish Altar Of Plagues, especially in reference to the more ethereal and dilated passages of their first album “White Tomb”, the one closest to atmospheric black metal.
However, the Anathema of the first works are very present: guitar arpeggios, decadent atmospheres and melancholic voices seem taken equally from the masters of British death-doom, as is easy to find for example on the third “Footsteps II” or on the last piece “My Tomb Beneath the Tide”; but the islanders don't even disdain some frontal assaults, such as on the title track “In Perfect Stillness”: the three cornerstones of Norwegian black, tremolo picking, blast-beat and scream singing, find an outlet here, but always in a personal and careful way.

The filiation with the great groups of Norway in the nineties is therefore there, but we must go to those who already at the time looked outside the scene and proposed an alternative approach to the subject, such as the aforementioned Ulver and In The Woods, and this seems to be the predominant influence in the music of Domhain, who for the rest are certainly also linked to Alcest, and, as already specified, to post-black metal, of which however the most innovative component is missing. In fact, the Northern Irish don't seem to like experimentation too much and linger on an overall rather classic style, although personal and linked in some way to the territory. They lull the listener, accompanying him along a sad and dark path, but made up of very sweet harmonies and arcane but familiar sound scenarios; rather than seeking the avant-garde at all costs, they prefer to rework and reinterpret styles already prepared by others, returning to already beaten paths, but with a subjective attitude linked to the roots: there is certainly a bit of Ireland in this work, but don't expect the usual Celtic tales, this is an album capable of going beyond clichés and touching the soul deeply.

The two guitars of Nathan Irvine and Ashley Irwin are at the total service of the songs, perhaps every now and then one would even expect some more incisive sorties, but one certainly cannot complain; even Anaïs Chareyre-Méjan's drums, well voiced by Andy Ennis' bass, are absolutely dry and aimed at enhancing the compositions: the precision, the sound rendering and the variety of solutions outline a performance of absolute class, which can refer for example to Anders Kobro, historic drummer of In The Woods and Carpathian Forest. If you then consider that Anaïs is also responsible for the cello scores, as well as sharing the vocal parts with Andy Ennis, you understand the level of the French-born musician's contribution to this work.

The first song “Talamh Lom”, introduced by the short acoustic “Una Tarra Ci Hé”, is a true masterpiece and will certainly be among the most successful songs of the current year, it is so beautiful, but all of this “In Perfect Stillness” repeats the success of the previous debut EP “Nimue” from 2023 and absolutely deserves to be listened to.