🎶Somnent
🌎Florida, U.S.A.
📀Heirloom
® Ardua Music
📅 30/10/2026
Florida-based American band SOMNENT are preparing to release their third full-length album, plunging listeners into darkness with a deeply sensitive subject: dysfunctional family relationships and the trauma they can inflict.
“Heirloom” is a heavy, introspective and melancholic album that places the vulnerability of the human psyche firmly at the forefront. SOMNENT do not approach the subject superficially. Instead, they dive into the darkness, using music as a means of capturing the struggle with the inner demons that distorted forms of love within a family can create. “Heirloom” offers neither easy answers nor an absolute sense of redemption. Rather, it feels like a painful process of confrontation and acceptance.
The album’s central themes are clear. Aside from the atmospheric opening track “A Voice of Inner Child,” which features Natalia Drepina of MOURNERESS on vocals, Giovanni Antonio Vigliotti handles all the vocal duties, effortlessly shifting between clean vocals and growls. The intensity changes accordingly, with the clean vocals accompanied by calm, melodic passages led primarily by the guitars, while the growls are paired with a more aggressive approach in which the drums take center stage. This contrast could also be interpreted as a musical representation of the two different sides of an abusive family relationship: periods of apparent calm and those that eventually erupt into violent outbursts.
The influence of European doom/death bands such as the unique DRACONIAN is evident on several tracks, most notably the excellent “Throne Aflame,” which also features one of the album’s finest guitar solos, alongside the one on “As You’ve Sown.” Spoken-word passages also play an important role in enhancing the album’s dramatic impact, with “King of Ruin” being the most notable example. This technique works effectively, adding a theatrical quality to the storytelling while intensifying the sense of discomfort that runs throughout the record. Despair, after all, is one of the defining emotions of “Heirloom,” with “Severed Ties” and “Where Silence Dwells” standing among the moments where it becomes most palpable.
As with most albums dealing with such difficult subject matter, SOMNENT, and Vigliotti in particular, had to delve deep into their own psyche and bring to the surface all those painful emotions that can be difficult to acknowledge, especially when they are connected to people we love.
Ultimately, the greatest strength of “Heirloom” lies precisely in its refusal to romanticize the reality it portrays. SOMNENT have created a heavy, emotional and demanding album that makes no attempt to offer easy solutions. Instead, it serves as a reminder that recognizing and accepting trauma is often the first step toward confronting it — even if true catharsis remains a much more difficult and distant process.
★ 8/10
✍🏻 Kostas Boudoukos
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