Bands that peg their name to their sound risk painting themselves into a corner, but on their earliest DIY recordings, Vancouver duo New Age Doom embraced truth in advertising. If not quite as gimmicky as their moniker might suggest—what if Laraaji made a Sunn0))) record, lol—releases like 2019’s self-titled anthology and 2020’s Himalayan Dream Techno staked out the middle ground between the cathedral and the commune, filtering heavy metal’s black-mass grandeur and percussive thunder through the free-flowing serenity and found-sound ingenuity of ’70s private-press ambient recordings. But since then, the New Age Doom name has come to represent less a cheeky genre mash-up than a guiding philosophy, a means to manifest the balance of natural beauty and apocalyptic chaos that governs life on Earth. Sure, New Age Doom are the sort of act who will set up shop on the street to startle unsuspecting passersby, but they also just might be the only noise band with their own brand of plant-based cashew dip.
Though centered on the core duo of guitarist Greg Valou and drummer Eric J. Breitenbach, New Age Doom have broadened their horizons on every album, often with help from collaborators. The most notable of these was 2021’s Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Guide to the Universe, where New Age Doom and a team of guest players backed up the dub legend on the final album he recorded in his lifetime. Their new release enlists many of the same musicians—including Blackstar bassist Tim Lefebvre and trumpet player Daniel Rosenboom—to support another vocalist, but the lead-role casting and musical approach couldn’t be more different. Where Guide to the Universe saw New Age Doom play a more subservient role to Perry, complementing their hero’s stream-of-conscious poetry with suitably zoned-out soundscapes, There Is No End has them constructing more concrete arrangements around the Norwegian dream-pop artist Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser, aka Tuvaband, whose luminous voice functions as the beacon that guides them through the stormiest passages.
There Is No End builds a bridge between the two projects’ respective worlds. Its opening track, “In the Beginning,” expands upon an idea introduced on Tuvaband’s “By the Time You Hear This,” the centerpiece of her 2023 album New Orders, where Marschhäuser asks, “Is this the end of the start of the end of the start of the end/Or is it the start of the end of the start of the end of the start?” In their original context, those words seemed to address the uncertain status of a relationship, but on “In the Beginning,” she weaves a similarly cyclical sentiment into something more like a Zen koan: “In the beginning, I’m just beginning,” she states matter-of-factly, “and in the end there is no end.” New Age Doom put that doctrine into action with a track that slowly whips itself into a towering inferno of tambura melodies, transcendental trumpet flourishes, and surging percussive grooves, before everything comes crashing down at the six-minute mark. But what initially sounds like a dramatic, drum-set-toppling finale is actually a gateway to the song’s extended coda, where the expanded ensemble smashes and thrashes with furious intensity for five more minutes until the clamor gives way to clarity.
