DRACONIAN

Major players in the world of ornate, gothic misery for the last 30 years, DRACONIAN have little to prove in 2026. The Swedish band's last two albums garnered some of the most effusive reviews they have ever received, and 2020's "Under a Godless Veil" appears to have been their most successful release to date. But if there was anything missing from the shimmering, flamboyant formula that has been the DRACONIAN way from the start, it was the absence of vocalist Lisa Johansson, who departed in the wake of 2011's "A Rose for the Apocalypse". Although her replacements fulfilled their obligations with style and class, it was Johansson's voice that dominated the Swedes' most potent past moments, the seminal "Arcane Rain Fell" (2005) included, and so it is a cause of some celebration that she has returned to the DRACONIAN fold for their eighth full-length outing. Newly re-acquainted with ostensible frontman Anders Jacobsson, Johansson quickly reasserts herself across these nine new songs, her ethereal tones blessing "In Somnolent Ruin" with no small amount of reawakened, romantic electricity. If wallowing in existential despair and the claustrophobic folds of love and loss is your thing, this album will quietly demand your attention.

The return of Lisa Johansson ensures that "In Somnolent Ruin" will be hungrily received by DRACONIAN fans, but in every other respect, this is simply the next, natural step along the Swedes' morbid path. "I Welcome Thy Arrow" is a devastating way to reintroduce the former singer to the faithful: her heartbreakingly elegant vocals lead the way, as another delicate melodrama unfolds. Still rooted in grandiose death / doom and super-dynamic gothic indulgence, it drifts along with stoic persistence amid a fizzing mist of celestial keyboards, shifting from intense, melodic passages to growl-heavy moments of glacial horror. At times closer to the widescreen ingenuity of MARILLION than to any more obviously like-minded peers, DRACONIAN have woven a progressive approach into their austere, traditional doom, and their songwriting has grown in stature as a result. Above all else, "In Somnolent Ruin" embraces beauty with more passion than on any previous album. For all their adherence to grinding, deathly clangor, songs like "The Monochrome Blade" and "I Gave You Wings" are as committed to bittersweet melody as they are to big, bruising riffs, and Johansson's vocals elevate the formula to new levels of efficacy, almost as a matter of course. Meanwhile, Jacobsson's abyssal roar remains a compelling focal point, not least due to some extraordinary, poetic lyrics. Only the hardest of hearts could hear a song like "Cold Heavens" and remain unmoved. "With any raging storm, some bitter funeral / How dreadfully cold must the heavens be?" is one hell of a line, and "In Somnolent Ruin" is full of such things: bleak but heartfelt declarations from the edge of mortal reason, delivered by dual vocalists who inhabit these songs with every fiber of their beings. The music underpinning those sentiments reflects a toe-to-tooth embracing of sorrow as a mesmerizing shortcut to revelation, with riffs that exercise unearthly restraint in their snail's pace pursuit of harmonic closure. DRACONIAN may not be the band to listen to while contemplating the futility of life, but as guardians of the doorway to desolation, they have plainly digested and understood their given mission.

As an additional plus point, "In Somnolent Ruin" sounds huge and cinematic, its soft-focus fury presented in a vibrant, multi-faceted fog of sharp colors and disorienting greys, with occasional bursts of arena-metal triumphalism from lead guitarist Johan Ericson. Fiercely accessible, in spite of its world-weary façade, and wonderfully lavish in its pristine execution, this is one of DRACONIAN's finest records to date, and the perfect response to an unhinged, uncaring world.