Album Review: Golgotha – Spreading The Wings Of Hope
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Spanish melodic doom-deathsters, Golgotha have a stuttering history dating back to 1992. Over the next six years they would release a couple of full-lengths and some EPs, but would go on hiatus until 2005, which saw the issuing of their New Life album. Another hiatus would last until 2014, when the band returned with the Erasing the Past and Mors Diligentis records in 2019 and 2022 repectively; and a live offering, Locked Down But Alive in 2021, in the year of its title.
Spreading the Wings of Hope is the band’s sixth full length album and finds Golgotha in fine form. Broadly speaking, the record is closer to the gothic musings of Christian Death than a full-on deathly doom-fest from, say, My Dying Bride, but that does not mean to say there aren’t plenty of melancholic observations on offer to satisfy the pastiest of emo-types.
Opening with the gentle, piano lead and ghostly voices of For Every Tear, it isn’t long before the symphonic grandeur’s slow and crushing progression is joined by guttural vocals. Tomeu Crespi includes a double-bass kick that initially seems out of place, but gradually becomes subsumed by the overall nature of the song. Clean vocals are handled by María J. Lladó, giving a Gothic feel to the tune.
The heaviness picks up again in a more complete way as the record comes to its conclusion and when the title-track hits it does so with an immediacy not experienced anywhere else on the record. Spreading the Wings of Hope posits no air or graces and simply explodes into existence with a huge expanse of sound. The gruff vocals are in from the outset and although María is present for the chorus, this one is where the drab atmosphere is at its most effective.
Straight after comes Hope as Guide, where all the album’s elements coalesce and merge in a morass of stomping riffs, glacial morbidity and a soaring solo, ending the record on a high.
Before reaching that point, there’s an emotionally wrought journey through the heart of Spreading Wings… to navigate.
The lead single, Gilded Cage, finds the band in a more upbeat mood, though the clean vocals lead on this one, there’s an inherent sadness in its very soul; second single, Human Vultures, shows the other side of the band and the fat chugging guitar acts as the platform for a demonic rasping voice and a stop-start riff which serves only to add more weight to the composition.
The creative process is geared towards wringing as much of the emotion out of the listener as possible. Closed Heart revels in the sweeping grandiosity of a Gothic romance, A Solitary Soul sees faint piano added to complement the growling vocals and the play between immense riffing and porcelain fragility is never more evident than on Hear their Cries.
Musically, the relevant actors play their parts: Tomeu and bassist Andrew Spinoza create a solid foundation for Vicente J. Paya and Dan Garcia to lay down fat riffs or conjure spiralling and soaring solos.
Vocally, María’s cleans compliment the guttural growls of Vicente and Andrew, making Spreading the Wings of Hope simultaneously a driving doom-death album and an emotionally tearing Gothic record of gothic splendour.
