Lmst

🖤 ROUND I - Phase 1 - match 12/50

Which one is the best doom metal album?

🤘 Shape of Despair, Illusion’s Play, (2004)
or
🤘 YOB, The Illusion of Motion, (2004)

➡️See pinned post on profile for the tournament rules

:mastodon: Please 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗦𝗧

🎧 YOU ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO GIVES EACH ALBUM A FRESH LISTEN BEFORE VOTING

#KingusMusicTournaments #MusicTournament #Doom #DoomMetal #KMTPoll #Music #ShapeOfDespair #YOB

Inborn Suffering – Pale Grey Monochrome

By Doom_et_Al

As a picky young tot, my favorite meal was “Mount Mashed Potato.” Ostensibly an uninspired lump of mash on the outside, probing with a spoon soon revealed surprising chambers of peas, hidden anterooms of carrots, and lurking chasms of warm gravy, which bubbled over when released from their confinement. Tiny Doom was delighted, and more importantly, it made a meal that I would ordinarily have considered fairly bland into something exciting and tasty. It also taught me that sometimes, solid ingredients and well-prepared food aren’t enough for the fussy; you need excitement and unpredictability. So how does this all relate to a doom metal band circa 2025?

Inborn Suffering are a French outfit who have been knocking around since 2002. Like the author Donna Tartt, they release an album every decade and then go quiet. Their latest, Pale Grey Monochrome follows 2006’s Wordless Hope and 2012’s Regression to Nothingness. For those unfamiliar with obscure French doom, Inborn Suffering play a form of mournful, melodic, sadboi metal that straddles the line between doom and funeral doom. Think Second to Sun, or Shape of Despair after a Red Bull. Pale Grey Monochrome sticks to the recipe, offering up nearly an hour of gorgeous, melodic death doom to complement the dog days of the Northern Hemisphere Winter. Yet in sticking to the tried-and-tested so resolutely, excitement and originality have been lost.

The biggest issue with Pale Grey Monochrome is that, while the ingredients are solid, and the preparation absolutely fine, there isn’t much that is surprising or unique about the material. Considering how absolutely bonkers and avant-garde some French metal bands are, this is surprising. Inborn Suffering keep things entirely safe for the entire album. “From Lowering Tides” shimmers and shines with gorgeous melodies… that don’t go anywhere unpredictable. The chords rise and fall like the tides, and the pacing of the song is logical, but nothing truly stands out. This pattern is repeated throughout Pale Grey Monochrome. The title track plods along in a very listenable fashion, but lacks the hooks to embed itself into the heart.

Some readers might be thinking, “But this is how funeral melodic doom works. One doesn’t expect fireworks and dramatic changes. The music is, by definition, ponderous and slow.” And that would be fair. But the best melodic death-doom bands find some way to differentiate themselves, whether it’s through experimentation (Atramentum, Esoteric), sheer melodicism (Shape of Despair), or epic vision and scope (Bell Witch). Inborn Suffering, unfortunately, lacks anything that sets it apart. This is a pity because, in addition to the spelling of the album, there is much that the band absolutely nails. The aesthetic is spot-on: from the opening chords of “Wounding,” the material sounds sad but inviting at the same time. It’s like putting on a warm cloak in a snowstorm. Inborn Suffering also have an innate sense of pacing, and the songs all flow and coalesce logically and meaningfully. When the highs hit (The climax of “Tales From an Empty Shell,” the dissonant middle section of “The Oak”), they feel earned. Listening to Pale Grey Monochrome is never a chore, helped by a generous mix that allows the material to breathe, and the hour passes easily. It’s a testament when so much of funeral doom feels like a drag.

Pale Grey Monochrome is a very solid album with much to admire but very little to set it apart. Your enjoyment of it will vary depending on how much you value originality and surprise. In other words, Inborn Suffering have offered a hearty meal, with good quality ingredients. But this is plain ole mash and ‘taters, like you’ve had a hundred times before. If the band chooses not to wait another decade for the next album, I can provide them with a blueprint of what to do next in the form of mum’s “Mount Mashed Potato.”

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 14 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Ardua Music
Websites: inbornsuffering.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/inbornsufferingdoom/
Releases Worldwide: February 7th, 2025

#2025 #30 #ArduaMusic #BellWitch #DoomMetal #Feb25 #FrenchMetal #FuneralDoomMetal #InbornSuffering #Review #Reviews #SecondToSun #ShapeOfDespair

Nothing beats #shapeofdespair on this rainy day.

#nowplaying #vinyl #doommetal #funeraldoommetal

My other submission for today's #SlowSunday:

Calliophis: Trepak

https://song.link/hvp0jwvbsdrkt

#DeathMetal #DoomMetal

FFO #ShapeOfDespair #Sorrowful #SuperStatic

Counting Hours – The Wishing Tomb Review

By Steel Druhm

Tears freezing in the cutting winter winds. Life’s blood staining the freshly fallen snow. These are the things that bring Steel to the graveyard. Naturally, I love my sadboi doom as well, and the long-defunct Finnish act Rapture in particular. Their style of highly melancholic melodoom resonated deeply in my cold dead chest cavity, and though they’ve been gone since 2005 I still go back to those albums regularly. When the two guitarists of Rapture reunited to form Counting Hours and dropped the excellent debut The Will back in 2019, I was ecstatic. It was as close to getting new Rapture material as we were ever going to get and they hit all the same grim feelz as they fused the early days of Katatonia with Dawn of Solace into a cold grave of an album. Now a few years later we get the eagerly anticipated follow-up, The Wishing Tomb. Can this melodoom super group deliver the same volume of sadness, despair, and depression to my doorstep and bid me enjoy of deep sorrow? Let us pray.

After a highly effective mood-setting instrumental opener that manages to wring some emotion from you, things kick off in truly grand fashion with “Timeless Ones.” This is Grade A Finnish sad doom at its weepy best, done by folks from Rapture and Shape of Despair, so they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s heavy at its core and overflowing with weepy, mournful guitarwork designed to pluck your heartstrings in that “dead puppy in the snow” kind of way. It swings between the works of Tuomos Saukkonen (Black Sun Aeon / Dawn of Solace) and Brave Murder Day Katatonia, with the Rapture influence never completely out of sight. The chorus is spun gold and the whole thing is poignant and captivating. A big part of that is due to the stellar vocals of Ilpo Paasela who excels at both death roars and clean, plaintive singing. I especially love the downtrodden riffage as Paasela intones somberly intones, “I saw the trail of stars….” The quality sads keep flowing on “Away I Flow” which smacks strongly of Deathwhite in the guitarwork and Dawn of Solace in the vocals, which is a lethal combination imparting powerful magic to the basic doom formula. Another major high point arrives with “All That Blooms (Needs to Die)” which is especially loaded with forlorn trilling and a hefty Fall of the Leafe vibe.

The Wishing Tomb offers so many great examples of gloomy Finn-core, that naming all of them would make my review unwieldy. I must however mention the brilliance of “No Closure” where the Rapture spirit is especially strong and Paasela delivers his best vocal work. The equally impactful “A Mercy Fall” must also be given its due for being so damn catchy despite its downtrodden delivery. There are a few minor stumbles though too. The title track is a good song with plenty of depressive atmosphere, but it’s overlong at over 7 minutes and its dreamy, sleepy drift lacks the punch of the album’s best cuts. The 7-minute closer “The Well of Failures” is much better and has truly monumental moments, but it could stand a bit of judicious trimming. These are very small complaints about an amazing, however. The 48-plus minute runtime doesn’t feel too vast and the album flows well. It’s a grim joy and one I can’t seem to stop getting lost in.

Rapture alumni Jarno Salomaa and Tomi Ullgrén walk a delicate line between recreating their old band’s sound and doing something new. They excel at melacholic leads and harmonies but don’t forget to bring the metal hammer down regularly with weight doom riffs and heavy chugga-luggery. They’ve crafted some beautiful moments here and every song has at least one that will bring an iron tear to your feeble eyes. Ilpo Paasela was a revelation on the debut and he’s even better here. His clean singing is much like Tuomas Tuominen (ex-Fall of the Leafe, ex-The Man-Eating Trees) and the anonymous singer of Deathwhite, and he sells the material perfectly, sounding heartbroken and inconsolable. His death roars are powerful as well, bringing the full weight of grief to the funerary music. This is a band that knows their chosen genre inside and out and crafts fresh-sounding killers from a well-worn template.

As much as I adore The Will, The Wishing Tomb is clearly the superior work. Counting Hours have the perfect formula and know exactly how to get to the heart of Steel. This will undoubtedly be one of the top albums of 2024 and right now it’s hard to imagine it not ending up in the top spot. I’m happy to be wrong though, because whatever tops this heartbreaking work of staggering genius will be something completely out of this world. Get this in your ears immediately and get sad.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Ardua Music
Websites: countinghours2.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/countinghoursfinland
Releases Worldwide: February 23rd, 2024

#2024 #40 #ArduaMusic #BraveMurderDay #CountingHours #DawnOfSolace #DeathMetal #Deathwhite #DoomMetal #FallOfTheLeafe #Feb24 #FinnishMetal #Katatonia #Rapture #Review #Reviews #ShapeOfDespair #TheWill #TheWishingTomb