Cross Vault are German quintet who describe their musical style simply as Doom-metal. Formed in 2013 and has gone through a series of line-up changes, this group does not have many releases in its discography. Currently, these are two full-length albums released in 2014 and 2015, as well as an EP released in 2016. Then after a  five-year hiatus, in 2021, the German label Iron Bonehead Productions release their third full-length album As Strangers We Depart. 

The album cover is a tableau, or perhaps a picture fragment, which depicts a landscape with a medieval town under heavy clouds. The painting is executed rather coarse strokes in expressive style. The general color scheme of the painting is yellow and orange, reminiscent of rust. A bright spot is a small piece of the sky on the horizon. It is made in a rather bright green-blue colour and looks like something alien to the general mood of the picture. At the top of the cover is the Cross Vault logo made from stylized Gothic letters. Just below the logo is the title of the album, written in a simple serif typeface. The logo and the name of the album have a beige colour that is closer to orange. I can say that the cover makes a pretty strong impression on close examination. It is gorgeous as a piece of art. It has the oppressive gothic atmosphere of the Middle Ages and has something apocalyptic in it. I think this painting fits very well with the musical part of the album.
 
 
The album consists of seven compositions, two of which are instrumental- with it running just under the forty-three-minute mark. From the first seconds of the album, a stream of atmospheric, heavy and perfectly balanced sound pours out. Throughout, the sound remains unchanged, except for a few acoustic moments. The guitars tone is both weighty and atmosphere, which gives it a kind of velvety quality. I cannot say that the guitar parts are very technical, as the usual metal riffs are largely absent on the album. I would say that guitars play the role of accompaniment here, and sometimes lead the main melodic lines, representing something like simply solos. The bass parts are recorded extremely cleanly. And, in contrast to the simplicity of the guitar parts, the bassist plays quite masterly, delivering parts worthy of progressive rock, but staying within the band's style. The bass guitar plays tightly with the drums, which makes for a very professional and interesting rhythm section. As for the drum sound, it's also superbly recorded and sounds very technical. The vocals are quite simple and melodic. The vocalist uses only clean vocals, with the timbre been quite simple- but high. However, sometimes, the vocal style becomes more extreme, going to a flashy tone in the spirit of Sludge and Stoner-doom vocalists. As for the compositional component of the tracks, it seemed to me that in comparison with the previous works of the group, the structure of the tracks has become simpler. Probably, now the compositions are better perceived as songs, as they have a classical song structure. On As Strangers We Depart there are fewer tempo changes and a variety of melodic structures in each track, which makes the songs more straightforward and easier to understand.
 
 Here, as with the band's previous albums, there is a marked influence of British Doom-band My Dying Bride. But now, having simplified their compositions, a stylistic bias towards Apocalyptic and Dark-Folk in the spirit of Death In June and Sol Invictus has happened. Also, it seemed to me that the album contains a small proportion of stylistic and vocal fragments reminiscent of the Norwegian band In The Woods from the time of the album Omnio. So I strongly disagree with some of the comparisons of Cross Vault sound with classic Bathory albums. Cross Vault sounds like My Dying Bride, who decided to experiment with the Apocalyptic Folk style. At the beginning of the review, I wrote that the group positions their style simply as Doom, but, to be honest, there is not much from the classic Doom here, except for some stylistic moves and a rather low tempo. If we go into the jungle of stylistic and genre associations, then I would call this style Dark Apocalyptic Doom. 
 
In my opinion, As Strangers We Depart turned out to be a very solid, stylistically uniform and strong album with a rather original approach to music writing and arrangements. I can see it appeal to not only to Doom-metal fans but also to fans of Apocalyptic Folk.