Vûlom — Longing (Official Music Video)
Vûlom is a melodic death-doom band from Zagreb, the second Croatian act to reach this site. Longing opens their third album Love's Lament, out since 13 September: seven and a half minutes aimed squarely at the Saturnus and Swallow the Sun school of sorrow, recorded, mixed and released entirely by the band themselves. Croatia keeps earning its place here.
When Trivan became the first Croatian band on this site last month, I wrote that they opened a door for their whole scene. It took four weeks for the next band to walk through it.
Vûlom are a five-piece from Zagreb, and they play the slow, melodic kind of grief: death-doom in the lineage of Saturnus, October Tide and Swallow the Sun, the influences the band names themselves. Longing is the opening track of Love’s Lament, their third album, out since 13 September. Seven and a half minutes, with guest backing vocals from Marija Marković lifting the saddest passages. The video itself arrived back in July as the album’s advance single, which is how this format likes it: no news cycle, just a song that holds up.
What impresses me most is the self-sufficiency. Two albums behind them (Walls of Agony, then the concept piece A Step Closer to the Grave in 2023), and everything on this one recorded, mixed and mastered by the band, artwork included. No label. The band says the name comes from dragon speech in the Elder Scrolls games, where it means darkness. A doom band naming itself after a video game word for gloom tells you the sorrow is serious and the people behind it are not.
Fans of Shores Of Null know exactly where this sits. Rome answered My Dying Bride. Zagreb is answering Copenhagen.
Listen to this: Love’s Lament on Bandcamp