Albums like this make you realise how exceptional music can be. The Veil-Departures reviewed by Mark J.

 THE VEIL — Departures

(Self-released, 2026)

Twelve years between records. That's not a hiatus, that's a reckoning. When Sydney's The Veil finally returned in June 2026 with Departures, the only question worth asking wasn't "where have you been?" but "was the wait worth it?" The answer is unequivocal.

Departures is a 10-track gothic doom record from a trio — Che de Boehmler on vocals and guitars, Ben Rumble on bass, piano, and keys, Bunga Keinanti on drums — that sounds, paradoxically, far larger than its instrumental configuration should allow. Produced by Lachlan Mitchell and engineered and mixed at The Parliament Studios in Leichhardt, mastered by William Bowden at King Willy Sound in Launceston, with cover artwork by Anaïs Chareyre-Méjan and layout by the storied Metastazis design house in Paris — even the credits signal a band taking the thing seriously.

This evocative and quite cinematic record is hard to pin down and resistant to being categorised. Atmospheric gothic doom is the base layer, but The Veil operates with a restlessness that keeps pulling the floor out from under your genre assumptions. Dead Can Dance's devotional sweep is in here. So is the melodic architecture of early Anathema. So is something post-punk and stark. The track titles — "Grey Metal," "The Machine Breathes," "The Blackout," "Ghosts Outnumber The Living" — read like entries in a journal kept by someone watching a city dissolve. De Boehmler's vocals carry that weight without theatrical self-consciousness; there's a directness to his delivery that the gothic metal tradition doesn't always produce.

What's most striking is the keyboard and piano work, which doesn't decorate the songs but fundamentally structures them. Georgina Lloyd's contributions across the first half of the album, and Rumble's keys throughout, give Departures a harmonic density that elevates the doom passages into something genuinely affecting rather than merely heavy. The album closer, "Ghosts Outnumber The Living," lands like a statement of intent — not closure but ongoing reckoning.

Albums like this make you realise how exceptional music can be, so deep and resonating and utterly memorable, even on the first play.

Twelve years. Worth every one.

https://theveilband.bandcamp.com/album/departures