The Artist of the Week: GVORN (Russia)

Formed in Yekaterinburg in 2015, GVORN emerged as a project dedicated to crafting music that embodies true darkness, a sound at once oppressive, melodic, and atmospheric. Across a decade of evolution, the band has consistently balanced bleak heaviness with cinematic moods, drawing listeners into shadowy mental landscapes where grief, mortality, and despair intertwine.

Their 2022 debut full-length Keeper of Grief introduced GVORN as a name to be taken seriously within the underground doom/death metal circuit. The album carried strong traces of funeral doom, slow and crushing yet laced with melodies that hinted at a broader vision. Now, in 2025, GVORN steps forward with their second release, the mini-album Lovecromancy, marking a significant shift in their creative approach.

Moving away from the more suffocating territories of funeral doom, GVORN now embraces the grit of old-school death/doom. The change is not cosmetic but structural, resulting in music that offers greater compositional diversity while maintaining the project’s defining gloom. Lyrically, Lovecromancy unveils a dark-fantasy inspired concept, deeply rooted in necromancy, nightmares, and undead mythologies, all colored by a fascination with the Elder Scrolls universe.

Drawing from a lineage that stretches through the bleak grandeur of My Dying Bride, the cavernous weight of Evoken and Ahab, and the spectral melancholy of Cemetery of Scream, GVORN channel the essence of old-school death/doom while nodding to atmospheric torchbearers like Worm and Swallow the Sun. These influences bleed naturally into their music, shaping a sound that is at once oppressive, melodic, and deeply cinematic.

The lineup consists of:

• Valery Potekhin – Vocals

• Roman Nadein – Bass, vocals (tracks 1, 4)

• Sergey Semenov – Guitars, additional mixes

• Vyacheslav Smirnov – Guitars

• Nikita Chusov – Drums

With mixing and mastering handled by Anton Kurtekov and artwork by Svetlana Kuprikova, GVORN reaffirms their place as a Russian force of doom/death, recommended for admirers of Worm, Evoken, Ahab, and the formative years of My Dying Bride.

GVORN – Evolution from Keeper of Grief to Lovecromancy

When GVORN first showed up with Keeper of Grief back in 2022, they carried that heavy funeral doom weight. It was slow, suffocating, almost ritualistic. You could feel every note like it was carved into stone. It was a record that sat in the shadows and demanded patience, rewarding you with crushing atmosphere and sorrow-soaked melodies if you let yourself sink into it.

Now with Lovecromancy (2025), they’ve moved. Not abandoned their roots, but shifted direction. The funeral doom elements are almost completely stripped away, and in their place you get something sharper, more alive, more old-school. It’s still death/doom, still dark and atmospheric, but the compositions breathe more. There’s more variety, more riffs that move, more dynamics that keep you locked in. It’s like GVORN stepped out of the tomb, not into the light, but into a broader, more terrifying world.

Where Keeper of Grief was about grief and weight, Lovecromancy feels like a fantasy-horror journey, pulling straight from nightmares and the Elder Scrolls universe. They evolved from being mournful to being cinematic. That’s a big leap, and it works.

Review: Lovecromancy (2025)

After three years of silence, GVORN’s return feels like a statement: a reclamation of their voice within the extreme metal underground. Lovecromancy is an extended EP (53 minutes) that blurs the boundaries between an album and a mini-release, a fact that underscores the band’s ambition.

From the opening track The Nightmare, the listener is submerged in a suffocating yet strangely lucid dream. The riffs cut deep with a raw old-school edge, and the drumming provides both weight and momentum, shifting away from funeral dirges into more dynamic death/doom frameworks. Potekhin’s vocals are cavernous, anchoring the atmosphere in darkness, while layered guitars weave a texture that alternates between crushing heaviness and spectral melody.

Empires For Vampires is where GVORN’s new identity comes into full view. It balances traditional doom pacing with passages that recall the melancholic grandeur of early My Dying Bride, while also embracing a sense of cinematic scale. The concept of vampiric empires is handled not with gothic theatrics but with an apocalyptic, dungeon-crawling gravitas that feels tied to their Elder Scrolls inspiration.

Necromantic Dream delves into surreal atmospheres, building tension with slower, brooding riffs before erupting into moments of death/doom intensity. It is perhaps the EP’s most memorable track, evoking both horror and wonder, like a soundtrack to a necromancer’s ritual at the threshold of forgotten ruins.

The Awakening closes the conceptual arc with intensity and resolve. It feels like GVORN channeling all the dread and majesty of their sound into a singular statement: doom that is oppressive, yet alive with a narrative pulse.

The inclusion of alternate mixes (Empires for Vampires and Necromantic Dream mixed by guitarist Sergey Semenov) adds another dimension, offering rawer, more immediate interpretations that highlight the band’s flexibility in sculpting atmosphere.

Ultimately, Lovecromancy is not just a continuation of GVORN’s legacy, but a rebirth. By stripping away funeral doom excess and embracing old-school death/doom energy, they have achieved a record that feels more diverse, more gripping, and more narratively compelling. The EP is immersive, grim, and unafraid to experiment within its defined palette.

For listeners of Worm, Evoken, Ahab, and those who long for the primal yet atmospheric era of 90s death/doom, GVORN delivers an offering worthy of attention. With Lovecromancy, the Russian band solidifies their place among underground acts unafraid to evolve while staying true to the darkness that defines them.

Favorite Track: Necromantic Dream

This is the one that got me. Necromantic Dream feels like the essence of what GVORN is doing now. It’s gloomy, yes, but it also drags you into this surreal soundscape. The riffs creep in slow, hypnotic, then the weight drops like a collapsing tower. The atmosphere is thick, necrotic, but there’s a strange beauty in it, almost like staring at something terrifying and not being able to look away.

It’s doom, it’s death, but it’s also dreamlike. The track title is perfect, because it really does sound like falling asleep and wandering through a nightmare you don’t want to wake up from.

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