Bandcamp Godthrymm carry a lineage that most doom bands would kill for. Guitarist and vocalist Hamish Glencross and drummer Shaun Taylor-Steels both did long service in My Dying Bride, Taylor-Steels also in Anathema, and the band’s founding mission, since the 2020 debut Reflections, has been to carry the torch of the great early-nineties British doom tradition forward without simply impersonating it. Projections, out May 29 on Profound Lore, completes a loose Visions Trilogy that ran through 2023’s Distortions, and it is the record where that bloodline becomes literal: Aaron Stainthorpe, the voice of My Dying Bride, returns to a microphone he has largely abandoned to guest on one of these songs.
That song, “Endure My Skin,” is the emotional and sonic centre of the album, and it is no coincidence that it is also the best-sounding track here. Where most of the record is mixed for maximum modern loudness, “Endure My Skin” is allowed to breathe: earthy, fuzzy guitars with real stereo width, a live-room drum sound where Taylor-Steels’ snare rings with genuine body, and Stainthorpe’s mournful presence threaded through it. It is the cut that most clearly remembers what made the originators great, the patient, grieving, theatrical doom that lets silence do as much work as volume.
Where the master gets in the way
The frustration is that the album keeps reaching for that effect and the production keeps blunting it. “Trenches Deep” opens the record with heavy compression that flattens its dynamics into a wall of pressure, biting saturated rhythm guitars that crowd the bass out of the low-mids, and a triggered-sounding kick that clicks through the mix without ever delivering real low-end punch. “Truth In My Own” is cleaner but more sterile, the drums audibly edited, the cymbals stripped of natural air. Catherine Glencross’s ethereal cleans float high over the arrangements throughout and give the band a distinct second voice, but on the loudest tracks they end up isolated above a mix that has no headroom left to hold them.
“Jewels” is the other track that escapes the loudness trap, its mastering generous enough to let the contrast between intimate clean-guitar passages and the wall-like distorted chorus actually register. The bonus closer “Epilogue” is the worst offender, a track where over-driven limiting pumps audibly and the cymbals turn harsh and sibilant, and it tells you something that the band kept it as a digital extra rather than part of the main sequence.
The dominant production decision across Projections is a loud, heavily compressed master that flattens the natural dynamics on most tracks, and the album is at its best in the two places that decision is relaxed. The recurring picture: rhythm guitars are densely saturated and biting with decent mid definition, but they crowd the bass out of the low-mids around 100 Hz so the low end loses contour; drums read processed and triggered, the kick clicking through for cut-through but lacking deep punch, the cymbals tending toward sibilant harshness in the highs. Vocals span guttural roars and aggressive dry shouts (Hamish Glencross) against ethereal, reverb-heavy female cleans (Catherine Glencross) that float high in the mix as an atmospheric layer, intelligible on the calmer tracks and isolated on the loudest. The exceptions prove the rule: “Endure My Skin” (feat. Aaron Stainthorpe) avoids over-compression for a breathing, live-room sound with an earthy fuzzy guitar texture and a ringing snare, and “Jewels” keeps enough dynamic range for its intimate-to-loud contrast to land. The closer “Epilogue” is the most compromised, with pumping over-limiting and harsh upper-frequency stacking.
Standout tracks: Endure My Skin for the Stainthorpe guest spot and the album’s most dynamic, best-sounding production. Jewels for the immersive intimate-to-loud contrast. The Sun Never Fell for the darkest, most mid-heavy atmosphere of the main sequence.
The songwriting is here, the players are unimpeachable, and “Endure My Skin” is a genuine highlight that justifies the whole trilogy-closing project. What holds Projections back is a mastering choice that fights its own best instincts, squeezing the air out of music that was built around the contrast between quiet and loud. Hear “Endure My Skin” and “Jewels” first; they are the version of this record that the rest of it deserved to sound like.
