Vehemency It makes me awkward to review something like Procession’s Destroyers of the Faith because it’s quite a hyped record yet I have almost zero knowledge of traditional doom metal. Well yeah, I’ve heard a couple of Black Sabbath’s earliest albums and love many funeral doom bands, but when it comes to the most traditional and essential records of doom metal, I’m mostly quite lost. So this is to be remembered while reading my review - perhaps it even brings a fresh perspective, who knows?

Destroyers of the Faith sounds massive. Despite being rather bare - meaning that it’s basically just guitars, bass & drums without any unnecessities - it becomes clear that they’ve spent a good deal of time in the studio making this sound this heavy and loud. At times, the loudness is brought to such levels that - though I’m not a proper audiphile so I’m not 100% certain - the album clips a lot. This kind of reduces the effect of the heaviness, but it’s just a minor detail anyhow.

The album is also epic as hell. This is thanks to the long compositions wandering from seven to nineteen minutes, always having an adventurous feeling to it. Felipe Plaza Kutzbach delivers his clean vocals convincingly and there’s nothing to complain about the rest of the instrumentation either, riffs and beats staying true to traditional doom. One of my personal favourites is the sorrowful guitar solo on ”The Road to the Gravegarden” that doesn’t try to hurry anywhere, backed up by a simple repetitive drum beat.

When the choral sounds of ”White Coffin” end the album, I’m left with mostly positive thoughts about Destroyers of the Faith. While not every second of the album is pure brilliance, it’s still clearly a strong whole that isn’t even prolonged (as could easily happen with slow tempo compositions, but this runs for just 46 minutes). The album inspires me, a doom metal newbie, to explore the traditional fields of the genre more deeply in the future, so indeed I would say that Destroyers of the Faith is a successful release. Bigger doom fans can add a star or half to my rating, without much doubt.

Time Signature Tomb of doom...

Genre: doom metal

"Destroyers of the Faith" by Procession offers old-fashioned, unpolished and unadulterated traditional doom metal with guitar, bass, drums and vocals - and that's it. No effects. No samples. No violins. No keyboards. Just your good old rock instrumentation. And with the good old rock instrumentation paired with heavy and simple riffs, Procession manage to create a melancholic doom-laden atmosphere. It is only in the very end of the last track "White Coffin" that they make use of choir-like effects so as to conclude their sad (in doom metal sad i good) musical journey on an ominously oppressive note.

The album starts out very strongly with the short introduction-like "Hyperion" which seques into the title track, which is fairly uptempo."The Road to the Gravegarden" also starts out strongly with a heavy, tortured, doom-laden, epitomic guitar riff, but ultimately, I think that this track is the weakest and least inspiring on the album. The following songs, "Chants of the Nameless", "Toomb of Doom", and "White Coffin" more than make up for this; they are simply brilliant examples of how traditional doom metal sounds at its very best.

While not necessarily original or groundbreaking, the music on this album is still of very high quality and, with the right support from the label and other instances, this band could reach the same level of Count Raven or St. Vitus - they're that good!

Recommended to fans of traditional doom metal.