The first thing I have to say is that when it comes to a genre like Doom / Death, I’m always open and willing to discover new bands, because, as I always say, anything that carries (by first or last name) the word “Doom”, will always be welcome to me. So when I heard about DISCOURAGED, I was immediately interested in listening to them. DISCOURAGED is a German band born in 2024 and debuted in 2025 with a demo titled just like that, “Demo”. It is a two song demo (‘Insomnia’ and ‘Farewell’), songs with which this first full-length we will talk about today, “A Farewell In Stages” from 2026 under the F.D.A. Records label on CD, opens and closes. As I said, here on the full-length, the album opens with ‘Insomnia’, a track with already a better sound and that here begins with an acoustic guitar intro that was not present on the demo. Typical Doom / Death, loaded with nostalgia and passages that go through mid-tempos down to slow ones just as it was done in the old school of the genre. The guttural, deep and agonizing voice of Luke Grindgärtner reminds me of several of the great vocalists of bands of this style, so I felt the band was very familiar. ‘Descension’, the second track, is a mid-tempo march, melodic where the guitars gain a certain degree of greater prominence and in which the band exposes a bit more musical depth. Then we jump to the third track, ‘Waves (Dark Is The Sea)’, that starts with the crash of sea waves and that, just as its name, it warns, drags us out to sea, towards the dark depth of the water, until sinking us into an agonizing spiral. Great one! The fourth track, ‘For All Things Must Die’, is submerged in an aura of mystery that brings back that darkness that surrounds everything that has been done in a genre like this. ‘Traces’, the fifth track, starts with more melodic and somewhat lugubrious guitars. Like in almost the entire album, again, it remains on that skeleton of mid-tempos, marching, like a walk towards the traces of a forgotten cavern. ‘All Hope Is Gone’ (sixth track) is the one I liked the most. It moves in different momentums, and tackles sadness, hopelessness, the rage of loss, the feeling we often have that it is the end. Very somber, cold, dense and black, just the way I like these kinds of songs. Next is ‘Emptiness (Haunted House)’, the seventh track, right off the bat puts us in a spell with that intro. You truly feel that emptiness of the haunting of an old and abandoned house. A house possessed by spirits and the shadows of the night in which there is a mix of terror with anguish and wide open eyes. How else could this album culminate than with the track ‘Farewell’. It is the great goodbye. One full of deeper melancholy. Of pain and of an album that surely already announces the signal towards that new door that takes DISCOURAGED back to the studios. I have been fascinated by DISCOURAGED. A band that I felt so much my own, so close to home, so familiar. Here you will find more information: www.facebook.com/discourageddoom, www.facebook.com/fdarec