Remiss of me, never getting round to reviewing Fórn’s debut album, The Departure from Consciousness, in 2014. This is an interesting new Bostonian doom band, who have definite parallels to bands like Thou: the riffs are slow, gloomy and soaked with downbeat melody, albeit with more strongly death metal-derived vocals. So I am tempted to say that if you like Thou you will also like this, but that’s maybe a bit unfair because there are other elements at work here as well.

This follow-up EP consists of four tracks but really only two ‘works’. Saudade and Dolor are each divided into parts one and two, and in both cases it’s the first that is significant. The second parts to both seem to function more as extended outros, like a warm-down after some very intense exercises. Saudade starts quietly, with these plaintive little clean guitar lines, but quickly ratchets up into lumbering, feedback-drenched doom riffs, accentuated by hissing, almost black metal vocals. There are also these spacey, high-pitched lead lines that float overhead giving it quite a dreamlike quality. Later on, the thunderous noise of these elements combined with the repetitive thud-thudding of the drums gives it almost an industrial feel, like Godflesh or C.R.O.W.N..

My favourite is Dolor, which reprises many of these elements but which also allows a stronger Southern sludge element to seep through. The highlight of the EP is when, towards the end of Dolor (Part I), this grimy cacophony dies away to be replaced by a mean, grooving coda that could fit on an album by Eyehategod, Crowbar or, indeed, Iron Monkey. Very nice, and a neat counterbalance to the more abstract ideas that surround it.