Innumerable Forms – Pain Effulgence

Released August, 22 2025 on Profound Lore Records

There are bands that write songs, and then there are bands that carve monuments out of sound. With Pain Effulgence, Boston’s Innumerable Forms have delivered one of those monuments—a towering slab of death/doom that feels less like an album and more like a burial rite.

From the opening seconds of “Impulse,” you know you’re in heavy territory. The guitars don’t just chug—they erupt, each chord landing like a stone dropped into a grave. Justin DeTore’s vocals are cavernous, as if dredged up from some ancient crypt, and the production—handled by Arthur Rizk—makes everything feel huge, oppressive, but never muddy. There’s clarity in the chaos, which makes the whole thing even more devastating.

What I love most about Pain Effulgence is how dynamic it is. Tracks like “Indignation” and “Blotted Inside” move with this natural ebb and flow, shifting from mid-tempo bludgeoning into slower, suffocating passages that practically squeeze the air out of your lungs. Then there’s “Dissonant Drift,” a song that almost feels hypnotic with its soaring leads—proof that Innumerable Forms aren’t afraid to add flashes of light to all that darkness.

The title track, though, might be the album’s crown jewel. It stretches out with a funeral-doom pace, pulling you deeper into the mire before crashing back with riffs so massive they feel tectonic. And just when you think you’ve survived the journey, the closer, “Austerity and Attrition,” arrives to seal the tomb—seven minutes of pounding, dissonant fury that leaves you drained but in awe.

There’s a lot of death/doom out there right now, but Pain Effulgence stands apart because it’s balanced. It’s brutal without being monotonous, atmospheric without getting lost in ambience, reverent of the genre’s roots without sounding like a clone. You hear echoes of Incantation, Disembowelment, and early Paradise Lost, but this is very much Innumerable Forms’ own vision of darkness.

By the end of the record, you don’t just feel like you listened to a death metal album—you feel like you went through something. A trial, a descent, maybe even a purification by fire and stone. Pain Effulgence is heavy music that leaves a mark, and in a genre obsessed with death, that kind of lasting impression feels very much like life. This is one of the strongest death/doom statements of the year. Turn it up, let it crush you, and maybe you’ll see a little of that strange, glowing light buried inside the pain. Where to buy: Profound Lore - Vinyl, CD, and Cassette Tape

Produced, engineered, mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk.

Artwork by Katie Muller