Way, way back in 2016, a good mate recommended Dark Souls II – Scholar of the First Sin to me. When my copy arrived in the mail a week or so later, I fired it up, and lasted about twenty minutes before losing my shit at an inanimate object, shouting ‘fuck this’, and then going back to Conan Exiles or whatever I was playing at the time. Next we spoke, he gave me some pointers, and I went back to it, making slow progress over the next month, before getting stuck on a boss at the base game’s mid-point and crying ‘fuck this‘ for good. That is, until Elden Ring came out and made me re-examine my feelings for FromSoftware‘s notoriously challenging games. Since then I’ve played everything from Demon’s Souls onward and have developed what I imagine is a similar love/hate relationship with the games to the average player. Being a recent convert as well as a metal head of almost three decades, naturally my thoughts quickly turned to ‘I wonder if there are any good metal bands out there that are inspired by FromSoft games?’
Well, finally, I have my answer.
Much like Hidetaka Miyazaki‘s almost patented minimalist level of storytelling, the background behind Sif and this, their second album is just as oblique. Little information exists on the band, and even their Bandcamp page had scant information to provide some idea of the world the listener is stepping into; ‘Aegis of the Hollowed King is the second album of instrumental doom metal by New Orleans based solo project Sif. Thematically inspired by the understandably maligned masterpiece Dark Souls II.‘ Fittingly, I had to refer to an external wiki (Encyclopedia Metallum) to find out the band is indeed a solo project of Richard Murphy, which is always a thrill to discover an artist who has been able to craft a solid piece of work across a range of instruments. And make no mistake, this is a fucking solid piece of work.
So, a doom metal solo project named after the big sword-wielding dog from Dark Souls, inspired by Bongripper, SUNN O))) and Thou has released an album based on Dark Souls II? This was basically made for me. Let’s fucking go.
There’s something almost transcendent about hearing the familiar sound of Majula’s bonfire, only to get steamrolled by a dirty doom riff – it hits with a similar glory to the one you get with the realisation that you can use a ballista to take out the Pursuer in The Forest of Fallen Giants. Such is the beginning of the album opener “Aegis”, and while I was expecting something more on the grim, funeral doom side of things, I was further surprised with a fuzz-drenched (albeit still thick) tone to the track. The eleven-minute epic periodically swings between stomping and pounding and some absolutely blistering dual tremolo picking, the shifts well-timed and never jarring. Off to a smoother start than my first DSII play-through, then.
“Bearer of the Curse” almost feels like Sif thought they were a punk band for a couple of minutes, before a course correction steers the song into more blackened doom territory. This intensity runs for roughly the first quarter of the track before it builds to a somewhat introspective middle section, followed by some good ol’ fashioned bottom-heavy dirge, before ramping the pace back up again with more of that glorious trem-picking. There is a lot going on here that other bands might allow to bloat out over twenty or so minutes, but Sif manage to showcase a gamut of what they’re capable of over the course of thirteen minutes, and I have to say, it’s…it’s really fucking good.
“The Last Giant” begins with some haunting, sombre organ before the riff fades up, however the tone and the pace both hold, and what we end up with is a more melancholy, funeral-doom-esque track. This is suitably fitting, as for veterans of the second instalment in the Dark Souls series, the boss fight with the titular giant is a somewhat hollow victory, particularly as the events of the story unfold over the course of the game (it also calls to mind the encounter with King Vendrick, one of the highlights for me). A truly beautiful song.
“Fume” begins with a stoner doom riff that works to immediately possess your neck muscles and nod your head along with or without the rest of your body’s consent. The riff marches through the first two-thirds of the track before building to a wall of noise colossal enough to protect Anor Londo, and then at the crescendo, wailing guitars take us, the song, and the album to a close. All that’s missing from the end of the record is the musical equivalent of this infamous screen:
For Dark Souls fans who also happen to be lovers of metal, this album has every chance to be as welcome as a bonus Human Effigy, a much-needed bonfire, or a shortcut that leads directly to a boss-fog. That’s not to say one has to be a FromSoft cultist to get anything out of this album, as there’s definitely plenty here to enjoy for non-video-game-inclined metal heads and doom fans as well; plenty of tight riffs, primal drumming, and thick, rich bottom end. Dark-medieval-fantasy video game themes aside, what we have here is a very well-crafted instrumental metal album that gleams with talent and impressively stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the peers of its influence, made even more remarkable for being the work of a single Ashen One.
Now if Loyal Familiar could design some merch for the band, I’d be as happy as Solaire had he found his sun…
