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Mourning Beloveth - "Dust"

If there ever was an album that could truly encapsulate all the connotations and derivations of the term 'doom metal', Mourning Beloveth's debut Dust is it. Never have the rawest, most unrefined forms of sorrow, despondency, weariness and trepidation been so succinctly captured, and then expressed, in a musical art form. For as one-dimensional as it may be, Dust is nothing short of a melancholic masterpiece, not only setting a benchmark for doom metal alone, but also all musical expressions that try to espouse such feelings. Hailing from Ireland of all places - not exactly a place known for its peoples' gloomy dispositions - Mourning Beloveth have in the space of 66 minutes achieved perhaps the perfect representation of true grief and anguish. With six tracks sprawled over this lengthy playing time, the compositions are long and slow, but never aimless or self-absorbed. The band have also foregone the neo-classical approach, with not even a keyboard or piano within earshot. What we have left is bleak scowling ugliness, paradoxically fuelled by the sheer beauty of such basic human emotions. With an impenetrably dark production, opener 'The Mountains Are Mine' is a stumbling testament to the pent up and passionate pain that carries MB through this epic album. Clean vocals of unadulterated lament are used in conjunction with the ungodly death growls - in several cases, simultaneously - and when combined with multi-layered guitar passages, create subtleties that reflect the varying shades of introspection that occur during real life grieving. The 15-minute title track alone is a morose powerhouse that effortlessly swoops and conjures the requisite emotions from the listener. It is hard not to be grounded in the immense weight of this album, both musically and conceptually, and it is increasingly rare today to find music that is so genuinely driven by such personal and deeply rooted emotions.

The recording has an endless wellspring of bottom end, enhancing the crushingly heavy impact of each chord. The guitars are dry and alienating, the vocals derived straight from the heart. All aspects of this monolithic sound draw to an apex in 'Autumnal Fires', perhaps the greatest doom metal song recorded to date (I think I've found the song I want to be buried to). This magnificent piece has vocals that are spine chillingly funereal, a compelling rhythmic midsection and an unfanciful guitar solo that is soulful and potently magnetic. It all comes to an aspiring end with a simple, naked clean arpeggio embellished with eerie layers of wandering distorted guitars. This approach is again invoked for album closer 'Sinistra', its solemn ringing melodies ending the album on a note of grim beauty.

The Sentinel Ireland print of this album features two bonus tracks, giving both a retrospective and prospective look into the band. One is a remastered version of a song from an early demo, the other taken from an upcoming full length - this sneak-peek proves just as depressingly exciting as Dust. While some may baulk at listening to well over an hour's worth of heaviness that crawls at a dirge-like pace, fans of doom will rejoice that here is a band who avoid the pretentious pitfalls of orchestration and female vocals, and deal in raw but lastingly effective songwriting. Apart from an occasional tendency to bludgeon a riff for more than its worth, Dust is ugly and uncomfortable, but entrancing. Mourning Beloveth have created what has to be one of the most devastating and powerful expressions of joylessness yet.