Ukrainian label based in my hometown of Kiev. Ukrainian band. The album released on my cousin’s birth, Sept 1, who still lives in Kiev. The band, Autumnia, is a creative duo where one of the best doom vocalists in Ukraine is promised to combine with one of the best melancholic doom composers. What’s not to like with this promo buildup? I was game from just reading the description and looked forward to listening and reviewing … and Your Autumnia.

Karma Negativa was most title fitting as its tone, arpeggios and electronic end depicted the sight most disturbing and negative. The bigger part of … and Your Autumnia doesn’t really come off as awfully unsettling, however, and at least the first part of the album reminds a lot of My Dying Bride classic riffs and Draconian melodies minus female vocals, violin and gothic flare. Among its heavier moments A Moment of Delight makes plenty of sidesteps, takes pregnant pauses and allows for softer minutes. And Many Shining Days Ahead opens up clean, with a softer background and flows out with dejected serenity similar to The River. It is only towards the end of the song drums roll towards more distressed screaming melody. In Loving Memory of Us is another track where piano, guitars and synth alternate for 3 minutes until My Dying Bride energy takes over again, double bass grows stronger and a quality involved solo emerges at the end. To describe Autumnia for the bigger part of the album’s first half most accurately, without knocking my socks off, or putting me on the edge of my emotions, the band 100% succeeded at creating a melancholic doomy aura with excellent quality rich sound where every instrument plays a role. Vocalist Vladislav Shahin has a powerful voice, as advertised, and can growl just as well as he can clean sing. His moany moments (And Many Shining Days Ahead) are a little artificial, but in some other places of the same composition he can be almost operatic, or become a preacher atop of some high ceiling cathedral delivering mysterious incantations (In Loving Memory of Us).

Not to be a one trick pony, and delve into matters death metal just as much as melancholic doom, Autumnia shifts to funeral heaviness on Your Grievous Eden in what is probably the album’s heaviest moment. Distorted guitar arpeggios flowing over double bass/blast foundation are very prominent on this composition. To Eternal Bliss is another discontent aggressive track, but Your Grievous Eden has a strange combination of death riffs and orchestral arrangements in spots, and thus feels more monumental.

As much as I appreciated Autumnia not just wallowing in softer muck, I liked the album’s soulful melodic moments more than its more rugged compositions. Narrative weaving guitars of O’Funeralia reminded me of Yearning’s With Tragedies Adorned, and that is the highest compliment I can make. Autumnia has a peculiar tradition to name the final track on its current album eponymously to its previous album’s title, so O’Funeralia follows the pattern eleven years later. What the track shows is that funeral can be pensive without being overly heavy, and otherworldly detached clean vocals can be as effective as growls.

… and Your Autumnia is definitely a quality album, but perhaps not a gem of gigantic proportions. It keeps you in attendance and has staying power, but relies on several heretofore well explored melodic death/doom approaches.