Eyeless In Gaza [AM] - "Act I: The Protagonist" [2020]

Artist: Eyeless In Gaza

Title: Act I: The Protagonist

Genre: Atmospheric/Funeral Doom Metal

Country: Armenia
Year: 2020

Track List:

1. The Protagonist
2. Maelstrom
3. Mournful Unconcern
4. Madrigal

Named after the famous novel by Aldous Huxley, Eyeless In Gaza is a new one-man doom metal band from Armenia, a place not known for having a big metal scene. It's a side project of one of the members of Bread and Wine, a female-fronted "aesthetic doom" metal band whose music I found to be hard to get into. The debut album by Eyeless In Gaza, however, caught my attention from the first listen:

"The debut album by Eyeless in Gaza, a band from Armenia, presents a fusion of different styles and gives a fresh look at the genre. A harmonic combination of classical acoustic guitar, academic choral chants, and dark ambient interludes, as well as motifs of the epic funeral doom metal and black doom metal with variable vocals, gives birth to a real epic canvas filled with magic that tells about a personal experience, which can be expressed exclusively by the language of music.
Act I: The Protagonist is an abstract conceptual album, where each track is a stage of personal experience, existential thoughts about destruction as an idea of ​​a new beginning. This is a dreamy and tragic monologue about deep feelings of regret and humility that are melting within us"

P.S. There's also a British band under the same name whose description looks interesting: "veer[ing] crazily from filmic ambiance to rock and pop, industrial funk to avant-folk styles." Would check out them soon too.