Anyone still reading: you need to, like, totally hear this. True, it still might not be your preferred cup of sorrow, but you should at least taste it and find out. Tempestuous Fall is yet another hooded manifestation of Brisbane, Australia's Dis Pater, whose other lumbering plod-jects include Midnight Odyssey and The Crevices Below. How much doom would a doom dude do if a doom dude could do doom? Allow Dis Pater complete artistic freedom and maybe we'll find out.

_The Stars Would Not Awake You_ consists of five majestic laments, each lasting between ten and fifteen minutes. Each emotional abyss beckons the listener toward further dissolution of will and self. "Old & Grey" breathes out a colorful synthetic sunset before plunging into psychic night; "Beneath a Stone Grave" rests on an echoey guitar ripple; a stately piano march leads the title track in its painful procession. Very little of the record will surprise you, but there is honor in honing a form, in perfecting its shape. Tempestuous Fall does what all great doom should: it envelopes and invests the mind, so that when the eyes open again upon the waiting world, the common background blur sharpens and grows shadows, and mundane objects bristle with fresh and ancient mysteries.