Finnish melodic doom death duo The Bleak Picture prepare to unveil new album, Shades Of Life!

Vocalist Tero Ruohonen (Autumnfall, Temple Of Kliffoth) and multi-instrumentalist Jussi Hänninen (Autumnfall, ex-Fall Of The Leafe) have been working together under the banner of The Bleak Picture since 2021. They released their first EP in that same year, Songs Of Longing and then in 2024 unveiled their debut full length album, the superb Meaningless, described by Germany’s Twilight Magazin as ‘downcast gloom and wistful melancholy with a pinch of hope’. Now in 2025 Ruohonen and Hänninen are ready to present to the world the second album from The Bleak Picture – and the strides taken since that well received debut are remarkable. Still built upon the foundations of classic, melodic doom/death metal, still downcast and wistful, still shrouded in gloom and melancholy…but Shades Of Life is also so much more. There’s an enthralling magic about this album, an aura that envelops you, a presence that embraces you and hides you from the outside world.

From your first step into the world of sorrow and shadows invoked by The Bleak Picture’s creative duo you are drawn inexorably onwards. There is no release until you have made your way from the weight and wonder of ‘Plagued By Sorrow’ to the final haunted resting place of ‘City Of Ghosts’. Along the way you will encounter the lush layers of sound and nobility of spirit that characterise first single ‘Without The I’ and the whispered vocals and aching sorrow of ‘Circular Reflection’, where a sense of terrible foreboding builds like accumulating storm clouds in a grey and bitter sky. You’ll traverse the vast realms of ‘Silent Exit’, an emotional voyage between states of being…between worlds, between lives. By the time the spirits of the ‘City Of Ghosts’ wave you on your way, back to the light, you’ll never want to leave.

Immaculately mastered by Javier Fernandez (TodoMal), a myriad of treasures can be found within the richly textured sound of Shades Of Life; the brilliantly effective rhythmic touches within the vivid contrasts of ‘Code Of Ethics’ or the dynamic vocal interplay of the dreaming ‘Absolution’. Yet again Ardua Music have unerringly allied themselves with one of the very finest forces in the world of dark, doomed and emotive music – and on June 27th you will be invited to share in the sombre sorcery of The Bleak Picture’s Shades Of Life.