Abysmal Growls of Despair Present Growth as a Two-Part Video

Abysmal Growls of Despair have divided the monumental track Growth into two connected videos, allowing the music to unfold at the same deliberate pace that defines the composition itself. The track comes from Torn, the latest album by the UK-based funeral doom project led by Hangsvart, also known as Lerat.

A Composition Too Large for a Single Chapter

Splitting Growth into two visual parts makes sense for music built around patience, accumulation and emotional pressure. Funeral doom rarely benefits from being reduced to a short promotional edit. Its impact comes from duration: riffs repeat until they change meaning, drones slowly fill the available space, and details that initially seem distant begin to dominate the mix.

The two-part presentation gives the visual component room to follow that process. Rather than forcing the track into a conventional video format, the release treats each half as a chapter in one prolonged emotional experience.

Abysmal Growls Of Despair – “Growth”, Pt. 1

Abysmal Growls Of Despair – “Growth”, Pt. 2

Torn Turns Grief Into Physical Weight

Torn explores the emotional experience of a husband caring for his wife during her battle with cancer. On the album’s Bandcamp page, the work is described as a testament to love and resilience, a context that makes the record’s heaviness feel deeply personal rather than theatrical.

The album also makes an unusual instrumental choice. Brass instruments, including virtual tubas and trombones, are placed at the centre of the melodic language. Their low ceremonial tone works naturally beside the eight-string guitar, drums, ritualistic ambient layers and long stretches of drone. The result has the character of a funeral procession viewed through a distorted, almost dreamlike lens.

An Established Voice in Extreme Doom

Abysmal Growls of Despair has been active since 2013, moving between funeral doom, ritual ambient and drone. The project’s own Bandcamp profile describes it as a one-person exploration of extreme music, while earlier critical responses repeatedly focused on its overwhelming physical effect. A review at Concreteweb characterized the project’s sound as suffocating, ominous and colossally heavy. The Obelisk went further, suggesting that this is music the listener does not simply hear, but allows to penetrate them.

Those reactions fit Growth. The track does not chase immediacy. It creates an environment and then keeps the listener inside it.

Editorial Perspective

The most striking element of Growth is not its length or its volume, but the refusal to separate emotional vulnerability from extreme heaviness. The brass lines give the piece a mournful human quality, while the guitar and drone layers turn that grief into something architectural. It feels less like a song moving toward a climax and more like a structure gradually closing around the listener.

Hangsvart has spoken openly about living with schizophrenia and about the role that altered states, grief and ancient spirituality play in the project. That honesty gives Abysmal Growls of Despair a seriousness that cannot be reproduced through genre imagery alone. Growth is difficult music, but its difficulty serves the subject rather than becoming the subject.

Torn is available through the official streaming page. Follow Abysmal Growls of Despair on Facebook, Bandcamp and YouTube.