| Autumnal Fires Review |
Mourning
Beloveth - Darren Moore, lead vocalist of Mourning Beloveth, was kind enough to send me both of his band's demos, which I will here endeavor to review. Before I had heard these, my first introduction to the band was the "Dust" CD, which I reviewed in a separate place. The demos here are quite interesting as all of the material on them, with the exception of 'Autumnal Fires', are unreleased. Chances are this material will remain unreleased in the future - with perhaps only "Forever Lost Emeralds" from the second demo being re-recorded for an upcoming 10" LP - so it is a good opportunity to gauge the evolution of this band's sound and to understand just where they are coming from. The first demo, which I believe was recorded in 1997 though am unsure (no year is given), is comprised of two tracks, "The Fruit and The Sorrow" and "Burden", clocking in together at around 20 minutes of total listening time. A clean guitar passage leads to a crushing riff on guitar, later introducing a melodic lead. This is how the first track begins before going through a round of several riffs and transformations, plodding thoroughly at a sluggish, funereal pace. About five minutes through some black metal-styled shrieks surface, breaking the prevalence of low growls, and later in the song clean vocals. "Burden" follows a similar formula with the alternation of clean and distorted guitars, 'clean' and harsh vocals. This second track carries a lot of the seed of the new Mourning Beloveth material, I thought, some melodies probably recycled later on in later songs, though it may as well be a coincidence. Some classical piano is incorporated for variation. It's fairly obvious at this stage that they still haven't found their own individual platform, but the promise is clearly there. The result is surely above average, with production quite satisfying for a demo recording, and the surreal artwork, finally, adds a nice touch to the overall presentation. "Autumnal Fires," the other demo I received, was released in the spring of 1998, and should probably be considered their first really worthwhile work, with a trio of powerful songs and the first real development of their own personalized take on the doom metal style. The three tracks on this one have a running time reaching nearly one half-hour, so the songs average around 10 minutes apiece. Both production and content are greatly improved over the last demo, again with movements trotting along at a snail's pace. It seems that here the band feels more confidence in their material, opting to slowly and carefully build the core themes of each piece. Listen especially to the vile vocal delivery on the opening track, "Forever Lost Emeralds" where you would think vocalist Darren is vomiting up his lunch rather than 'singing' properly. Very impressive. Two of the tracks finish with classical piano pieces, while the last, "Autumns Fires In Somnolent Harmony," which was later reproduced for their debut CD, ends with a hypnotic web of soft arpeggio guitar over a bed of noise, lulling the listener into a sweet dream. This entire recording, interestingly, has a feel of drunkenness about it, a kind of drunken stupor, though not necessarily in a pejorative sense. Mourning Beloveth... drunken with depression, perhaps? At any rate, and despite dragging on a bit in certain parts, this is a good demo, and in many ways even more emotional than the debut. Not bad at all... powerful, quality doom/death. Y. Arkadin
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