Before I get into this review, I’ll be honest, this is my first time listening to Frayle. This is my first time really listening to this genre. Their brand of doom-soaked heaviness isn’t something I’d usually go for. I live in a world of folk, indie, and singer-songwriter confessions, not heavy slow-burners wrapped in distortion and ritual. But Heretics & Lullabies pulled me in from the very first track, and before I knew it, I was sitting there driving around with this record playing, letting this strange, cinematic darkness wash over me. It’s intense, unsettling, at times somehow peaceful. The best way I could describe it is like watching a storm roll in and realising you don’t want to move.
“Walking Wounded” is the record opener and it does a great job of setting the mood immediately. It’s not loud for the sake of it (something I was really worried it would be) it breathes, creeps, and crawls. Gwyn Strang’s voice is haunting but oddly calming, almost like she’s singing from another world. Then out of nowhere, they drop a cover of “Summertime Sadness” that’s so stripped-back and eerie it almost doesn’t feel like a cover at all. When I looked at the tracklist before listening I knew this one was going to be good. They twist that familiar melody into something haunted, turning Lana’s melancholy into something ritualistic and doom-laden. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
From there, things get darker. “Boo” legitimately feels like a séance, part theatre, part threat. It has these chant-like lines (“Say my name three times in the mirror, this won’t end well for you my dear”). Be warned, if you’re anything like me, this song gets really heavy. Then there’s “Demons,” where Gwyn flips the usual doom narrative on its head and owns the chaos: “They don’t know what I know, I’m a fucking monster.” It’s empowering, venomous, and fits right in.
“Glass Blown Heart” might be my favourite on the album, that beat and slow building start is unreal. The imagery used throughout is so vivid. It’s poetic and violent at once, like beauty that knows it’s going to shatter.
On either side of that track are “Souvenirs of Your Betrayal” and “Hymn for the Living”. These thread the line of a more emotional tone. You can feel the ache behind every word. “Just once I wanted you to be afraid of losing me.” It’s grief wrapped in distortion. “Heretic” arrives, and blows everything out of the water. It feels like an absolute anthem. It’s defiant, spiritual, and one of the most cinematic in scope. The closer, “Only Just Once,” slows everything down to a whisper vocally. The instrumental here is crashing and heavy and at times overpowers the softer vocals. “What if I could, only just once, be everything?” There are amazing lines like that sprinkled throughout the album that for a first time listener can be hard to hear on a first listen. The track closes out with a 2 minute instrumental and after all the heaviness, it lands like a massive exhale.
As someone stepping into this genre for the first time, I found Heretics & Lullabies surprisingly accessible despite how heavy and layered it is. Every sound, every silence feels intentional. You don’t need to know the rules of doom metal to get lost in it. It’s a record about pain, faith, and transformation, things anyone can relate to, just told in a language of distortion and beauty that I had to get used to. I didn’t expect to like this album as much as I did, but here we are.
‘Heretics & Lullabies’ wont put you asleep with a score of 7.5 out of 10
Heretics & Lullabies track listing:
1. Walking Wounded
2. Summertime Sadness
3. Boo
4. Demons
5. Souvenirs Of Your Betrayal
6. Glass Blown Heart
7. Hymn For The Living
8. Run
9. Heretic
10. Only Just Once
Order Heretics & Lullabies HERE:
Reviewer – Alan Robinson @alan_robinson_photography