REVIEW: Hell - Submersus

This ancient tomb we call earth

41:10 // July 11th, 2025 // Sentient Ruin - Lower Your Head

The subterranean doom outfit from the Pacific Northwest, conjured in solitude by M.S.W. (aka Matt Williams) sometime in the late 2000s, has maintaned a presence in the underground scene as profound as the theological significance of its name. Hell’s earliest recordings (Hell I through III from 2009 to 2012) stand as tar-stained monoliths of American funeral sludge: anguished, ceremonial, and emotionally obliterating. Minimal in personnel but maximal in weight, the project’s vision has had a well-preserved aesthetic approach in art and sound over the last 20 years or so, built on orchestral ambiance, black metal howls, and an entrenched feeling of ancient rot.

Despite cultivating a dedicated niche audience, Hell has also remained willfully obscure, and faithful to its sui generis visuals of scorched landscapes and bleak medieval woodcuts. After a five-year pause, the returning roar of the self-titled record Hell in 2017 was the most complete and widely acclaimed statement yet, with critics whispering comparisons to Khanate, Grief, Mourning Beloveth or even classical requiems filtered through Sunn O)))’s amp pillars. Then followed another period of reticence, with M.S.W. himself being busy under his own name and putting out just a couple of collaborations and split releases with Hell (the one with Primitive Man is especially recommended). That is, until now.

Clocking in at a lean 41 minutes and spread across five movements, Submersus represents the awaited reawakening and low-crawling descent of the project back to the trench, capturing Hell’s primal power as a slow-drowning beast of an album full of swelling strings, soul-tearing vocal layers, and scattered pockets of fragile melody in between thick chunks of doom / sludge cement. It shows M.S.W.’s overt understanding that restraint isn’t weakness, and that mood can sometimes be stirred from texture alone. This is where Hell’s musical mindset feels most apparent: less concerned with immediate devastation, and more interested in shaping sustained emotional gravity through funereal pacing and occasional, distant industrial feedback.

Opener “Hevy” unspools nearly 10 minutes of tectonic riff crawling as it sits on your chest like a slab of wet granite, with every howl and melodic motif being a nail driven in with religious intent. The track gets more and more terrifying as it speeds up to borderline black metal tempo charge towards the end, before giving way to the spectacular piece “Gravis” with its clanging stoner / doom guitar lines at the beginning and the thrilling, solemn choral synths towards the end. The abiding worship of the riff, draped in sorrowful chord shapes and with the barest glimmer of melody, is also met in the penultimate track “Mortem”, which vaguely reminded me of a band like Wreck of the Hesperus, if they ever recorded with a baptismal font.

What’s referenced above is where Submersus delivers the most of its tactile potency, yet it is not completely without misdirection. While the sluggish final track “Bog” presses on suffocating tape hiss and martial noise that serves as a proper closure to the album, its middle section feels like it wallows too much in singular, simplistic dirges, even more than the regular level of M.S.W.’s stripped-down compositional style. Moreover, the four-minute interlude “Factum” lands somewhat unmoored and offers little, even in terms of flow, disturbing the otherwise raw and convincing pull of the album. But even when operating at grim austerity, Submersus remains sharp and offers an oddly meditative experience, as its stubborn refusal to overstate is what makes this band so compelling to its audience.

After a decade and a half of sonic exorcisms, there’s a commitment here that feels earned. Hell’s persuasive command of bleak atmosphere with Submersus is merely a continuation of the same vision that gave birth to this musical entity, and only few artists in extreme metal sound this physical. M.S.W. keeps on mastering the claustrophobic craft and presents a murky, grief-stricken work that, even with minor structural falters, manages to summon significant dread without imploding. Still strictly for fans only.

7.5/10