There’s a strange, almost ceremonial hush surrounding Annul Noir, as if the duo stepped out of a forgotten wing of Northeast Ohio and carried with them a private weather front of tension and ache. Formed in the early months of 2024 between tour schedules and restless nights, JV Green and Dominic Passalacqua assemble their work with the air of two conspirators deciphering forbidden verses. Somber Sonnets to Die For, their debut single, materializes as heavy-lidded, ice-touched, and steeped in the sense that someone is whispering words of taboo. Its titular song feels like a gothic hymn.
Somber Sonnets To Die For sways with slow conviction, measuring time in sighs and soft thuds. Synths hum behind the bass; guitars scrape the edges, pulling threads of light into narrow beams. Even the silence between phrases feels weighted, as though the air itself is part of the composition.
Green, whose guitar lines once scorched across stages from Brutal Assault to Party San, moves differently here. His touch is leaner, stripped of bombast, more like an architect outlining the corridors of a ruin. There’s a cool patience in the patterns he shapes: beats that seem engineered for late hours when the mind wanders sideways, keys that fall like muted bells, and riffs that advance in quiet procession. His past in Uada and Cloak haunts the corners, but what he does with Annul Noir feels like a coded message delivered through frostbitten breath.
Passalacqua, meanwhile, steps toward the microphone as if addressing a gaggle of ghosts. The voice: firm, solemn, carrying the grain of someone who has stared long into winter, threads through these tracks. Years inside dark folk and black metal projects have honed his tone into something ceremonial. He occupies the track with an uncanny stillness.
The accompanying video for Somber Sonnets To Die For reinforces this aura: a performance staged in a hazy room – perhaps incense? where an animal skull watches as an ancient witness and roses decay in ceremonial grace.
Watch the video for Somber Sonnets To Die For:
Follow Annul Noir:
Or via: