Song Of The Day: Doomfall – “Birthrite”

Check Out The Denton Sludge/Doom Metal Band’s Crusher Of An 11-Minute Standout Track From Its Just-Released Debut Album.

Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.

Doomfall – “Birthrite”
RIYL: The idea that doom and sludge metal are a spectrum.
What Else You Should Know: Doom and sludge metal both have earmarks that include heaviness, low tempo, simple rhythm guitar melodies and an underlying sense of darkness. As such, they are not only intersectional and often confused for one another, but they are so niche and specific that artists who delve into the genres oftentimes can’t do so without sounding like a carbon copy of an akin predecessor.

Doomfall is not one of those bands.

The Denton sludge/doom metal band (featuring members of Upsetting and Orcanaut) meets the aforementioned criteria, but it puts its own spin on it in contrasting cleanly-sung vocals from Katie Puryear with gravelly, shredded screams from guitarist Hayden Kirkby.

Admittedly, the lead guitar instrumental at the beginning of the track is a tad cliched and makes the song start off on some rather dramatic footing, but where Doomfall falls short, the band more than makes up for as the song progresses. Your run-of-the-mill Electric Wizard enthusiasts wouldn’t be able to make dynamic changes with as much effectiveness and emphasis as what we hear in this track. And, despite the song’s 11-minute length, it’s quite engaging and even friendly to listeners who don’t have the attention span to listen to something like Sleep’s Dopesmoker.

But most importantly, the vocals add just as much value to the listening experience as the instrumentals do. While Puryear is a skilled vocalist, she doesn’t try to sound operatic, and because she sounds relaxed, it leaves more personality to be deciphered. Kirkby also doesn’t resort to theatrics in his vocal performance, and that, in turn, also makes his presence sound more natural.

There are many moving parts to explicate here, but they morph together into this rager of a tinnitus-inducing track, and while it isn’t devoid of blemish, it’s still a strong testament to just how much imagination is left in genres as seemingly barren as sludge and doom metal.