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Mourning Beloveth 'A Murderous Circus'
Irish doomsters Mourning Beloveth created quite possibly the best doom
metal album of 2003 with their last effort, _The Sullen Sulcus_; so it
was with bated breath that I played its follow-up _A Murderous Circus_
for the first time. The band's doom/death is now somewhat less reliant
on the sheer heaviness of their guitars -- which never made up any great
majority of their arguments in the first place, but the band has explored
slightly different ways of doing things this time. This change may also
be due to the fact that they have opted for a German studio in place of
the famous Academy studio in England.
Opening track "The Apocalypse Machine" starts in a truly remarkable
way, the first few minutes consisting of such a superb slab of doom metal
that you are forced to expect a masterpiece from then on. Then it goes
away for a while into less remarkable territory, before returning midway
through its duration with a different passage that is nearly as great
as the first. Finally, it goes back to a relatively catchy, but inconsequential
riff for what seems like a very long time.
Unfortunately, _A Murderous Circus_ occasionally buries some of its finest
moments amidst a newfound tendency to indulge in slow, repetitive, but
not exactly heavy or doomy riffs. The main problem is that these riffs
are just too simple to have much effect without some crushing distortion
to help them. Mourning Beloveth manage to go into semi-acoustic mode several
times and get away with it very well indeed -- but this sort of riffing
that they resort to on occasion is neither emotional nor crushing, and
simply stands in the way of the songs getting to where it matters. Having
said this, there aren't that many weak sections, and it is mostly the
excellence of the passages they enclose that makes them stand out more.
For the most part, this is a very solid album, with some great atmospheric
moments (e.g. the nearly twenty minute long "Nothing (The March of
Death)"), some great doom metal and only a few (unfortunately sometimes
long) parts that are comparatively poor.
Despite its slight shortcomings, I still recommend _A Murderous Circus_
to every doom metal fan out there, simply because it contains some of
the very best doom metal you will hear this year. Mourning Beloveth have
refused to simply produce more of the exact same thing, and credit must
be given for trying new things within the same general blueprint. If they
can build upon the best bits of this album and chuck out the rest next
time around, then _The Sullen Sulcus_ -- along with plenty of doom metal
classics -- will be beaten. For now, they haven't really disappointed
with _A Murderous Circus_, but I believe they can do even better than
this in the future.
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