Published: April 8, 2019

None are a black metal band from the US and this is their third album.

The artists behind None have released an album every April since 2017’s very enjoyable self titled debut. In 2018 we were treated to the superior and very well-formed Life Has Gone on Enough, which saw the band’s blackened vision improve even further. Now it’s 2019, and we have Damp Chill of Life, the apex of their development so far.

None play atmospheric black metal with a firm depressive edge. It’s cold and bleak, but filled with frosted emotion and grim negativity. This is as icy as the album cover, and like nature in all of its harsh glory, its power cannot be denied.

The band’s songwriting is finely honed at this point, and every track on this album succeeds in what it intends to do, evoking sadness and atmospheric darkness in the listener with ease. Absorbing and compelling, Damp Chill of Life is the type of album you can lose yourself in as its 44-minute playing time unfolds.

Melancholic melodies and delicate synths and piano assist the main blackened distortion in its quest to drown the listener in emotive darkness. Some doom elements also appear to help drag everything down even deeper into the abyss of suffering.

These songs are as effortlessly vast and expansive as a snow-covered landscape at night. The music is well-crafted and the style and feeling is kind of a mix between None’s first two releases; the raw depressive energy of the first and the more professional atmospheric delivery of the second combined. Essentially, I suppose, Damp Chill of Life takes the strengths and lessons learned from the band’s previous work and forges them into these new songs. The end result is another triumph of blackened misery.