A year after their full-length debut "Monolith" Ripis has once again distilled a gloomy mountain rain into heavy music and now presents their second album "Shadow Dies in Morning Light". While it's no less colossal than the first take, it turns down some of the wretched aggressive tones present on the previous album and replaces it with more chilling melancholy and mourning. On Bandcamp this is tagged as 'doomgaze' which is a term that I'm not super familiar with but just feels right - it's three parts doom and one part gaze where the slow, mammoth force of metal is slightly softened by a dreamy mist, but is made no less solemn because of it. The resulting sound is majestic and it has a blunted might perfect for leaving you desolate and alone in the valley seen on the album cover. There's a churning agony in the music that seems to sap your life away to produce a sharp haze of pensive guitar. A haunting voice only adds to the dreary atmosphere and the vocal melodies leave a spectral trail across each song - in particular the despondent pleas to 'kneel down and pray' on "Burdened by Stone" seem to channel something from beyond this mortal coil and could make your heart turn to stone. This album occupies a lot of headspace with its dismal ambience so get ready to be drawn in and left somewhere low! -Brandon
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