Please note, vinyl is a pre-order to be shipped early April 2023.

Celestial Season's somewhat-recent (let's not think about how long ago 2011 was, though) reunion didn't quite pick up where they left off-it was a return to their doom-heavy era of the early 1990s, as evidenced by 2020's The Secret Teachings and Mysterium I in 2022. These newer works have an unusual perspective--they're not quite a time capsule back to 1995, but perhaps something even better. With many original members back in the fold, this is doom metal penned by original innovators of the genre, but also by fans that have grown along with the genre since then. On Mysterium II, the second part of the band's planned trilogy, this perspective continues to provide some of the most beautiful, poignantly heavy doom-death metal one is likely to find on this side of Y2K.

Mysterium II highlights how careful orchestration and composition can elevate doom metal like anything else, fusing strings and guitars into crystalline suspensions of delicate might and punctuating them with just enough drums and growled vocals to keep heads nodding and hands clenched through the tears. There is an art to this that goes beyond just finding sad chords or making songs long enough, and Celestial Season's mastery of this art hasn't dulled at all in the nearly three decades that separate Mysterium II from their early works–it has only sharpened further.