Yet to a fault entirely my own I remained completely unaware of them. As true hidden gems, their previous records have come out on small labels: the vinyls for instance have been released on small the Dutch label Lay Bare Recordings, which has also released the new The Answer Lies in the Black Void record, for instance. However, for the new record they signed a deal with Napalm Records, which should definitely give them much wide recognition and possibly swing open a few doors.

At its core you could rank Frayle under doom, but only marginally so. If you squint your eyes you can definitely hear the trademarks of morose, dirging riffing in this witches’ brew, yet they add so much more. Vocally, Gwyn is somewhere in between Chelsea Wolfe and Sara “Chibi”Taylor from Candadian goth rockers The Birthday Massacre.

Frayle’s witching doom feels very gothic in many aspects. With both of them literally being fashion designers, their visual representation on stage and in the videos is very much in the fore. This is not something you will often encounter in doom metal, which is usually almost devoid of any fashion sense at all.

‘Walking Wounded’ opens the album followed by the instantly recognizable cover of the Lana Del Rey hit ‘Summertime Sadness’.  Right in time for the spooky season they’ve penned this year’s quintessential Halloween hit with ‘Boo’. Right on the heels of the cover it is the most catchy song on the record though an earworm chorus and great vocal interplay with some rare death growls.

That brings me to Frayle’s true strength. True, the masks, face chains and the whole spooky getup will draw your attention to them, but what makes you stick around is their innate ability to be both accessible and unsettling at the same time. While Strang’s vocals are deceptively alluring and sweet, they are equally dark, brooding and foreboding. Underpinned by a slow lumbering atmosphere that creeps under your skin, the songwriting on this, their first record for a bigger label is of such a high level that is poised to break them to a broad audience, far beyond this rather limited audience of left field doomsters.

In fact, I see them mainly as the heralds of a new generation of dark music in general, having the potential of even revitalising the goth scene which currently is growing a bit stale in my opinion and actually needs a good kick in the rear end if it harbours any hope to remain relevant.

With three bangers frontloaded in the beginning, the album might run the risk of blowing its load too early, but the quality really remains quite high across a sprinkling of songs like the guitar heavy ‘Demons’  or the surprisingly fragile ‘Heart of Glass’ with another sparkling gem tucked away at the end through the infectious ‘Heretic’ where Jason Popson from Mushroomhead pops in for some growling guest vocals. There is not a single filler on this remarkable record and that is quite a feat in itself.

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