01. These Pristine Memories
02. On Death’s Door Part I
03. Man Proposes, God Disposes
04. The Fade
05. The Eye
06. Days Gone By
07. Silence
08. On Death’s Door Part II
The lacey band logo and the dark cover art with a woman’s arm dressed in a white vintage sleeve, while the rest of the body disappears in a turbid lake of water lilies, leaves no margin for error on what metal genre is heard on I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep.
Opia is a new band, formed by musicians from the UK and Spain. They blend gothic and death/doom metal in a stunning debut of ethereal atmosphere and crushing heaviness, with songs that are both beautiful and sad, and bear deep emotional resonance.
After a short intro track, the album begins with the first part of “On Death’s Door”, a song about a person dying from a terminal disease in an age they shouldn’t, having their loved one by their side. Right from the beginning, you get an impression of what the entire album sounds like; powerful riffs, melancholic melodies, atmospheric keyboards, all shrouded in doom and gloom. Immediate comparisons would include bands like Draconian and Swallow The Sun, but, to me, Opia feels more like a female-fronted My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost. Most bands of this style use a male vocalist for the growls and a female for the cleans, but, in this case, vocalist Tereza Rohelova does both, and she is nothing less than astonishing. Her harsh vocals are so aggressive, brutal, and sinister, in stark contrast with her ethereal and dreamlike cleans, and hearing her in the first, non-instrumental, track of the album is almost shocking.
The music is lush and captivating, with acoustic guitars and mournful lead melodies giving way to shattering riffs and powerful drum beats. The keyboards are omnipresent setting the mood, which can be dreamy, mysterious, menacing, or eerie. Changes in style and spirit are not rare, with “Days Gone By”, for example, starting with a clean guitar metamorphosing into a galloping power-doom riff, and then further turning into a melodic death doom earworm. I would also like to point out the album closer, and second part of “On Death’s Door”, which treads on the path of the first part, but also features a blackened edge with double-kicks, swirling riffs, and shrieking vocals towards the end, before it comes to a close with a few divine melodies and an absolutely stunning solo.
Lyrically, familiar themes of grief, loss, mortality, and despair are explored, but the way the lyrics are sung by Rohelova is what gives them meaning and substance. Her Eastern European pronunciation makes her sound like some kind of elf in the forest when she uses clean vocals. On the other hand, she can be very threatening and one can notice that especially on “Silence”, when she roars ‘purgatory of silence’ or on “The Eye”, when she growls ‘necromantic spells, now borne forth’.
A review of I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep would not be complete without special mention of “The Fade”, a song “inspired by the lived experience of one of our members who experienced the heartbreaking journey of a loved one suffering from vascular dementia”. I have never had an experience like this, but I am sure many of us have had similar ones. I cannot forget that, when I first listened to “The Fade”, I subsequently played it around thirty (30!) times during the following 24 hours. I had to somehow get it out of my system before I could enjoy the rest of the record. Featuring only clean vocals and based upon a seemingly simple melody, it is one of these songs that become classic, unforgettable, iconic… I could go on with more dithyrambic praise about this song, but I am sure you already got the point. These days, I always play I Welcome Thee, Eternal Sleep in its entirety, but I still give “The Fade” at least a couple more listens when it finishes.
The genre of gothic death doom metal used to be a very rewarding one, but the large number of bands going for that style has made it sound grating. Here, not only the atmosphere, the melodies, and the performances are excellent, but, above all, the songwriting is through the roof. If you scratch the surface, which is the familiar musical style, you will find how subtle details in the structure and the progression of the songs make them stand out from the pack.
In this reviewer’s opinion, debut and album of the year contender.
“As a stillness descends
The finality of the grave
The last of what was, no longer
Lost forevermore
“As a stillness descends
A serenity in oblivion
As you succumb to the fade
…succumb to the fade”
 | Written on 29.06.2025 by Only way to feel the noise is when it’s good and loud! |