Finnish funeral doom icons Shape of Despair return from the wintry Nordic gloom on their new album, Return to the Void. Between the success of the majestically downtrodden Monotony Fields (2015) and today, the members have been composing (glacially) and otherwise ensconced writing/performing with their other projects like Finntroll, Impaled Nazrene, Throes of Dawn and Counting Hours. The Finns have never been or found the need to be prolific, however. The race into the cold darkness is a contemplatively unhurried task. Return to the Void is musically and thematically that same journey, one of perpetual solitude and aching hopelessness, driven straight into the heart of frigid twilight. As ever, this is cheerless music for sunless days.
