Blazing Eternity – A Certain End of Everything [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

In a year where I excessively obsessed over low-IQ, unevolved death metal, a few special albums shook me from my brutish ape froth and made me appreciate beauty and melancholy. Counting Hours did it, and this little unsung gem from Denmark did it too. Blazing Eternity saw a pair of releases in the early aughts and then vanished into the ether. They reformed in 2024 and dropped an album very different from the alt-goth-rock heard on 2003s A World to Drown In. Instead, A Certain End of Everything follows in the exact footsteps of my much beloved Rapture, very early Katatonia, and Slumber, with bits of Insomnium and Enshine sprinkled over the frosted tear flakes. In the process, Blazing Eternity finds a sound sure to hit the sadboi heartstrings and bring you the gift of unhappiness just in time for the holidays.

Though hardly offering a new take on the style, these Danes know how to wring all the misery juice from it for maximum heartache. Opener “One Thousand Lights” is over 7 minutes but every second is steeped in such exquisite morositude that you’ll wish it was longer. It captures everything I loved about Rapture and currently love about Counting Hours and it’s in the running for my Song o’ the Year. The weeping, trilling leads, the harsh but downcast vocals, the forlorn noodling, it’s all so glorious! It reminds me of “A Tear From a Beast” from Autumnal’s 2014 opus and that’s very high praise. The title track is equally grand and sullen, doomy and full of icy emptiness. Depressing guitar work seeps grief into your bone marrow and there’s no joy in this void of despondency. The chorus will stick in your soul and form a lasting sorrow reservoir. Fun stuff, right?

One could argue the album is one-note and that note is relentlessly grey and depressive, but that’s true of anything in this genre. There are no weak songs and there are sufficient variations in tempo and vibrancy to prevent everything from devolving into a morass of malaise. “Your Mountains Will Drown Again” has a Goth rock vibe and calls to mind the more upbeat material from Lake of Tears. Closing movement “The Bells” also spikes the energy level just enough to wake up the fast-twitch muscles while submerging you in a frozen Finnish lake. Morten Lybecker is adept at crafting soul-killing leads and harmonies full of forlorn gloom and decorating them with pretty but hopeless trilling, making everything feel like it leads to a funeral. There are some truly beautiful moments captured here (I’m especially taken with the piece beginning at 4:31 in “The Bells”). Vocalist Peter Mesnickow delivers the majority of his lines in a harsh rasp quite like that of Henkka J. Villberg of Rapture which works perfectly with the material.

A Certain End of Everything is sadboi Goth metal done very well. I’ve been returning to it all year and it’s proving to be a great listen on cold, bleak winter days. Blaze of Eternity caught lightning in a frozen bottle here and you should get yourself some of these negative emotions. Only through enjoying of deep sadness can we attain true happiness.

Tracks to Check Out: “One Thousand Lights,” “A Certain End of Everything,” and “The Bells”



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