apanthropy

Shrineburner
Hymns of Despair
(independent release)
Released: September 11th, 2026

Rating: 8/10

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1 – Void of Guilt
2 – Spectral Cataclysm
3 – Bodies Dragged to Sunlight
4 – Slow Death Chant
5 – An Ocean of Broken Hope
6 – Hymn of Despair
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We have written, at length, about what Chicago has done, and is continuing to do, for the underground music scene. We’ve covered bands such as Immortal Bird, Motherless, November’s Doom, and Master/Abomination, amongst many others, and the city has been extensively highlighted in many of our features regarding the evolution of extreme music from 1985 to 1990. It radiates the same basking rays of talent one would expect from markets such as Florida, New York, or the Pacific Northwest. This one city alone is responsible for a respectable number of notable underground and extreme acts and will, undoubtedly, be yielding numerous more in future years. What is it that resides behind the influences that engine these creative monstrosities? Is it the oceans of concrete, the overcrowding, the rusted skeletons of industry? The people, the miserable fucking winters, the constant looping tedium of presence; day in, day out? Is it just the bleak sum of existence?

Released on September 11th, 2026, Shrineburner hold within their broken fingers the Hymns of Despair full-length. Six songs, 46 minutes. Progressive, monolithic, and crushing, a reflection of Chicago metal. Their debut offering is impressively hopeless and emotionally engaging in an anxiously constant sense.

Shrineburner exist in a strange realm of sound. We can attempt to categorize it; we will fail in doing so. It is many things. Hymns of Despair is like heavy black oil pouring into a pristine bay. It is thick, miserable, covering everything in a foul pitch, ruining the environment it occupies. Sludge metal doesn’t come close to conveying the full range of sound and composition at work. Doom fits the concept of intensity but the progressive elements and the post-metal leaning, including an almost hardcore-like approach to vocal execution, also break the concept entirely. It is despondent, wholly, that much can be universally agreed upon, but even describing it as ‘melancholic’ or in a state of ‘agitated fervor’ or ‘anger,’ is missing the depths Shrineburner choose to explore.

Shrineburner endure beyond the veil of emotions like ‘melancholy’ and ‘anger,’ pulling at the root of such things. The anxiety of passing time that smolders in the deepest reaches of each man’s thoughts, the pale dread laughing at every close human relationship one will ever have, the frustration at an existential level; the human willpower required to exist against inexistence. It is spiritual exhaustion.

Hymns of Despair, the overall sound, is a combination of no longer caring and caring too much. It is the exact moment of time one becomes trapped between both concepts with one’s mind attempting to reconcile two things that have nothing in common between them.

‘Void of Guilt’ is the descent into abandon. A simple introductory phase of buzzing distortion and apocalyptically droning guitar. It’s the sensation of waking up when one is hoping to not wake up. The frame of thought is obliterated by the blasting entry of ‘Spectral Cataclysm,’ accompanied by a wall of sound comprised of dense, saturated guitar tone and gut-churning bass. Beginning with a tremolo progression that could be described as black metal through its use of minor intervals arranged in despondent orders and configurations and ending in the sludge and murk of a Sabbathian-style rhythmic riff that circles over and over again, establishing a deep groove and the pulsing foundation to build riffs above and around. Vocals enter, deep pushes from the center of the chest, carrying with spite and agitation, an almost hardcore-style approach to lyrical patterns and execution. Riff sequence after riff sequence rises and resolves into the next reckless shocks of massive sound, and the song carries this identity with it for a large portion of the early and center segments of the song. A bridge eventually forms, slowing the pace down, stripping the tonality down to dry signals – clean guitar, the deep growl of the bass, and simple rim taps to keep time. Building and building, it clamors up the side of the sonic mountain, eventually reaching the apex, spending some time in the clamor of the dry signals before launching itself off into suicidal oblivion. Syrupy waves of distortion run rampant once again, with booming chord voicings and light melodic accenting that is sometimes barely discernable. The experience lasts nearly 11 minutes.

Much like a reckless dose of psilocybin, it is not ideal for the experience to be interrupted. Each song feeds energy into the next, creating a crushingly heavy and oppressive narrative, full of equal parts melody and dissonance, immense focus on rhythm and groove, extended passages of riffs circle past time and time again, stoking atmosphere in doing so. ‘Bodies Dragged to Sunlight’ lasts half as long as the previous track, but the fury and disturbance are more directly forward. Exploring crawling and glacial tempos towards the middle of the track gives inflection, changes in shape and color, paying intense focus to the low-end reinforcement and the steady rhythm patterns.

‘Slow Death Chant’ makes up the middle passage of Hymns of Despair and perhaps accentuates the post-metal, almost blackgaze, approach to atmosphere through simplistic and ritualistically circular riffing. Doomy, in some sense upliftingly so, somewhat of a contradiction of emotions, like holding on to hope when surrounded by a forest fire.

Entering the final length of life on Hymns of Despair are two monuments of speaker worship. This is where headphones and earbuds fail to do justice. A song with the magnitude and stride of ‘An Ocean of Broken Hope’ is best given over to big amps and big speakers, with the floor-shaking bass and haunting clean guitars driving the first segment of the track. Cresting towards the three-minute mark, the song navigates listless waves of ringing open notes and slabs of simple chord shapes and progressions. Shouted vocals animate, bringing life to the barren landscape created by the instruments. The song ebbs and flows, entering periods of massive rhythmic force and contrasting it with extended ambient clean bridges to link segments together. The song is given time to breathe, to reach its hands up towards the sun with the last of its life force burning away, it’s a haunting experience, the crown of Hymns of Despair. A dirge of cosmic magnitude.

‘Hymn of Despair’ closes the album down, one last stretch of darkness before the sun rises. Perhaps the most tonally vibrant of the songs off the record and boasting some of the most animated vocals to go with it. The tempo drops out shortly after the five-and-a-half-minute mark, moving into a slower headbanging trance that begins to draw the album into termination. Slowly it burns itself out, becoming fainter and fainter, before resolving into nothing but a dim noise.

One more point of attention to bring to the front. The album artwork is stellar. Your eyes dart from point to point, finding nothing but suffering and anxiety, in both the macro and micro details. It is not blatant gore, or some overused iconography, but a depiction of something that feels uncomfortably unnatural and undesirable. It feels, with the ever-increasing encroachment of digital and streaming formats on listener habits, that album artwork doesn’t hold the same place of power it once did. Maybe that’s why imagery like that of Hymns of Despair has such a forceful visual engagement. It brings power back to the visual side of what the music represents.

Hymns of Despair, ultimately, is not a record you pick apart. It sounds best as a whole movement of music, not as a collection of songs or individualistic ideas. Shrineburner has their tones figured out, they have their dynamics figured out, which is a great thing to hear on a debut record. Coming out of the gate with this much grievance is a statement, not belonging to any one school of sound, not taking conventional approaches to contemporary song composing, the noxious emotional drain and dread it wears like a pall, it all adds into this smothering experience that will inevitably set Shrineburner into a space of their own.

Label:
Band: Shrineburner

AJK