Umbra Nihil is a fairly unknown doom metal band from Finland. They released a split album with Aarni in 2002 on Firebox Records and this is their debut album, “Gnoia”. The mastermind behind the band is Vilpir aka Ville Vierimaa who handles guitars, drums, keyboards, vocals & some other more odd instruments. The band also consists of Markus Marjomaa from Aarni on lead guitars and Jari Kuntola on bass.

This album does not try to provoke feelings like despair, hopelessness, apathy and so on like many other doom bands try to achieve. So in case you were hoping for some really depressing stuff you will be disappointed. However, if you’d like to hear something more experimental and creative then Umbra Nihil might be worth a try. It’s always nice to hear something different, right?

Describing Umbra Nihil’s sound is not the easiest thing to do. The band uses a more non-conventional approach to writing and composing songs, just like Marjomaa does in Aarni. It’s obvious that Vierimaa and Marjomaa both share similar ideas and ambitions of creating weird doom metal compositions. However, “Gnoia” doesn’t sound as avant-garde and strange as Aarni’s “Bathos” does. Umbra Nihil sound more traditional (if you can call it that) and have a darker atmosphere than Aarni. I found the music to be quite relaxing and dreamlike; almost psychedelic at times. Unfortunately it tends to get a bit drawn-out and boring and that’s where the album falls. It’s not very memorable either for most part. After listening to the album several times I don’t remember much from it except the chorus of “Dream In the Witch-house” and a handful of other passages.

I think this album could have worked just as well as an instrumental album cause you don’t pay much attention to the vocals anyway. Even though the album is 60 mins long. The production on “Gnoia” is good enough and the instruments are all very easy to hear and doesn’t drown out each other. The bass is high up in the mix and gives Umbra Nihil an interesting doomy sound. The rhythm guitar sound is quite bad though and could have been way better. But overall it’s not a bad album. A little more variation in the songs would have been nice and I hope we can see that on the next album. Umbra Nihil is not a band I see myself listening to all that often but “Gnoia” is one of those albums that are nice to put on every once in a while.

[This review was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]