An unpredictable Drone and Doom Metal entity from Finland returns with a beyond unique EP, featuring the raw, repetitive structures that have always been its core while also pushing into a more progressive direction.

Hailing from Lohja, a town in Finland located in the southern interior of the country (and home of a statue of the world’s saddest miner), Experimental/Progressive Drone/Doom Metal project Exhalus, the brainchild of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mircea Purdea, will darken your minds with its newborn EP, entitled Inexorable Decay, the follow-up to the 2022 album Failed Rituals to Ascend. Featuring the raw, repetitive structures that have been the core of Exhalus music throughout its 19 years of existence while also pushing into a more progressive direction, the EP is perhaps the project’s most experimental one yet. Furthermore, while it’s not the first one to use synthesized clean vocals, it’s the first that uses them this extensively, giving an extra touch of uniqueness to the whole album when compared to all of its previous releases.

The opening track Erosion sounds utterly sluggish, vile and disturbing from the very first second, with its deep gnarls and sharp riffage working as the soundtrack to a grim horror movie, followed by Vortex, offering a weird, unique fusion of metallic and groovy guitars and bass with eerie vocalizations, or in other words, it’s the epitome of Experimental Drone and Doom Metal. Mircea keeps hammering his guitar and bass in Grinder, again blending the past, present and future of experimental music while also presenting massive beats that add an extra dosage of heaviness to the overall result. Surrender continues from where the previous song ended, bringing to our avid ears wicked guitar lines and a complete sense of lunacy and despair during its three instrumental minutes; and last but not least, the EP ends with Faded, setting a serene mood to the sound of the piano that remains until the very end.

In the end, while at its core the music still had the approach of Drone Metal and the misery of Doom Metal, the structure became more and more progressive, with most songs on the EP not even being considered metal (if there’s a limit to what metal can be). Hence, if you want to know more about this uncanny entity from the land of ice and snow, you can find Exhalus on Facebook, stream more of its music on Spotify, and purchase a copy of Inexorable Decay from BandCamp (keeping in mind the CD digipak version of the album is limited to 50 copies only). No one knows what’s next for Exhalus, and I dare to say not even Mircea Purdea, keeping the project as fresh and vibrant as it’s mysterious and unpredictable, exactly how the fusion of Drone and Doom Metal shall always be.

Best moments of the album: Erosion and Grinder.

Worst moments of the album: None.

Released in 2025 Independent

Track listing
1. Erosion 2:43
2. Vortex 2:24
3. Grinder 3:26
4. Surrender 3:18
5. Faded 2:31

Band members
Mircea Purdea – vocals, all instruments

Guest musicians
Topias Jokipii – vocals on “Erosion”
Chris Kembry – guitars on “Faded”