Mourning
Beloveth 'The Sullen Sulcus'
After having witnessed a show of the band about two weeks ago,
I knew I didn’t had to worry about Mourning beloveth’s new
album; 'The sullen sulcus'. Out of the (only) four songs the band played,
there were two songs of this album, and the difference between these songs
and the songs of ‘Dust’ were quite big, actually. Where the
songs of ‘Dust’ are rather simple yet such effective ‘tear
drawers’, the songs on ‘The sullen sulcus’ show the
same band, yet having matured and progressed to an amazing level. Either
on the area of vocals, emotion, and to a certain extent, the complexity
of the songs (As said, to a certain extent, the band is called Mourning
beloveth, not Meshuggah beloveth), which has grown to the point were it
takes the listener quite some time to get ‘into’ the songs,
but once you’re there the reward is huge. In the good old doom tradition,
the songs have all an average length of over 11 minutes, yet the band
is capable of writing such intense, quality music, that during all the
six songs it fully absorbes ones attention for the complete 11 minutes.
For all my fans *ahum*, or at least the people that read my reviews on
regular basis (if there are any) know that I only seldom spend any words
on the production of an album, for I find it of only minor importance,
but in this case, I can’t let this go by unnoticed, as this is one
of the most fitting productions I’ve heard for a long time. Heavy,
but it also has the same warmth that floats of the cover artwork, and
is very, very clear. Stuff like the vocals, that deserve to be in the
front ARE in the front, and things that are ment to add to the atmosphere
are hidden in the distortion, sometimes you don’t even realise they’re
there, but they definitely add up to the miserable feeling this record
breaths. I could go on about the striking artwork and the lyrics forever
but you just need to experience those for yourself, since they’re
very abstract and your interpretation will be totally different from the
bands’ or mine. Although there is one thing we all can easily agree
on; this ‘Sullen sulcus’ is not only very important for the
band itself, but also is allready one of the best releases this genre
has to offer us this year, and wether you’re any kind of a doomster
(even a traditional one!) or know how to appriciate quality music in common,
you can not miss this one.
Reviewed by Loek on March 5, 2003.
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