Rome-based Melodic Black/Doom Metal outfit Shores Of Null have teamed up with Finnish Funeral Death/Doom masters Convocation to deliver a split release, Latitudes Of Sorrow. This is a doom-laden offering, “with haunting, melancholic atmospheres, creating vast, introspective spaces where absence, mortality, and inner turmoil resonate, showing two different faces of Doom Metal that complement each other.”
Shores Of Null / Convocation Split – Latitudes Of Sorrow
Release Date: 21 November 2025
Words: Jools Green
The Shores Of Null tracks are atmospheric, bleak and haunting, while the Convocation pieces are crushing, very funereal and cavernous. Combined, they make a bleak, thought-provoking and sublime listen.
Latitudes Of Sorrow is a five-track offering with the first three by Shores Of Null, opening with An Easy Way, also released as a single and a tantalising insight into the album. This is described by the band as “the most straightforward of all our songs on the EP. It has a dual nature. On the one hand, it’s quite catchy and memorable. On the other, it retains a deep inextinguishable darkness that leaves very little room for hope.”
Lyrically, An Easy Way looks at depression and the inner struggle, as well as the temptation to surrender when everything seems utterly bleak, reflecting on the human frailty that can lead to self-destruction. The mindset and mental struggles are superbly reflected in the music, which ebbs and builds in pace with the mood of the struggling mindset. Slow and doomy with the deeper vocals and faster with the cleans, the atmosphere is unnervingly gripping in total a compelling listen.
The second piece The White Wound was inspired by the avalanche that struck Hotel Rigopiano on 18 January 2017, in the Central Italian region of Abruzzo, near where vocalist Davide grew up.
“Imagine 120,000 tons of snow coming down from the mountain at the speed of 100 km/h and destroying everything on its way,” Davide says. “29 people died and only 11 survived.”
Lyrically, the song meditates on grief, loss, and the anger over the negligence that allowed the tragedy to happen, leaving lasting emotional scars. Musically, it delivers a very haunting and sorrowful melodic element, the pace more constant, just gently ebbing and building as it slowly progresses, reaching its most intense from midway through.
The cleans are more prolific across this piece, adding that extra degree of reflection and at times taking on a more acidic aspect, which I do like.
Musically, it is quite icy too, again powerful, reflective and compelling.
Regarding the next piece, The Year Without Summer, Davide comments, “Browsing the web for catastrophic events, I came across an unprecedented volcanic eruption that took place in 1816 in modern-day Indonesia, which triggered devastating consequences. Sunlight was obscured, temperatures plummeted, and the world faced famine, floods, and epidemics.”
Pace-wise, it is an almost funereal crawl to open. The lyrics are delivered with a matching slow reflection, the punctuation and phrasing of the lyrics adding to the atmosphere. It also features Marko Neuman of Convocation delivering guest vocal growls, which help to reflect the bleak darkness of the catastrophic event. Again, it compels you to reflect deeply on the lyrics, which are delivered across all three Shores Of Null pieces with clarity and impact. 
The final two pieces from Convocation, in complete contrast, take things to a crushingly cavernous depth thanks to the Funeral and Death/Doom overlap in their sound.
The first piece, Abaddon’s Shadow, with lyrics by Matti Mäkelä and Kari Kankaanpää of Sepulchral Curse delivering guest vocals, is ten and a half minutes of smothering, unnervingly heavy music. The cavernous and magnificently protracted vocals engulf you, and the music sends a chill down your spine as it crawls along with menacing intent. It is an absolutely breathtaking listen that grips fiercely onto your attention and holds you utterly enthralled from start to finish.
The second piece, Empty Room, has Lauri Laaksonen covering all instruments, songwriting, and lyrics with Marko Neuman on vocals. A repeating riff delivered in varying degrees of brutality as well as restraint dominates the first two minutes of this piece, creating an unnerving atmosphere.
Alongside the cavernous vocal delivery, the piece breaks into several mournfully reflective melodic passages with that repeating riff retuning in all its varied, unnerving forms in between. Another piece that is off the scale in terms of atmosphere, the ebb and build enthral and command your attention, again delivered at a crawling pace that crushes everything in its wake.
These two tracks annihilate your senses in the best possible way. They are so smothering and all-consuming, I love them. It is like being wrapped in a dark, scary blanket so tightly you cannot move, but you do not want to anyway. A hugely powerful listen indeed.
The artwork for Latitudes Of Sorrow was created by Lauri Laaksonen of Convocation, the cover portraying someone who has either left or remains as a haunted, spectral presence in a vast, lonely, void-like space. The empty chair is a powerful image intended to evoke presence in absence.
End-to-end, a superb EP, Latitudes Of Sorrow, the Shores Of Null / Convocation Split, is out on 21 November 2025 via Everlasting Spew Records. Pre-orders are available from https://bit.ly/42PbNY8, for physical with digital available from Bandcamp. The album is also available as a stream on Spotify.
