Unleash TACSF!

Click !HERE! to unleash the Alphabetic Content Selector Feature!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Mournful Congregation - The Book of Kings review

Year : 2011
Genre : Funeral Doom
Label : Weird Truth Productions (JAP), Osmose Productions (FRA), 20 Buck Spin (US), Independent
Origin : Loxton, South Australia
Rating : 9.0 / 10

Buy it now

Mournful Congregation's The Book of Kings ruthlessly emerges as the proper antidote for the most comfortably cultivated stock-hopes, giving your psyche 76 minutes to spend directly under the weight of a world that exhibits no hurries whatsoever to offer you direct comfort. The standard crawling protocol of the robust genre of funeral doom is in full effect, and now comes to you with especially crushing melodies of monstrous harmonic overpower via a fabric that can only be regarded as such a serious and relevant sonic contribution as that of the latest of genre-brethren Esoteric. Read a review of Esoteric's current to date, Paragon of Dissonance, here.

The temper of the game herein is eloquent, sober, and doubtless faithful to the consensus cause of the territory it wants to offer compliments to. As it usually - if not always - is with all funeral doom with the sacred common agenda, this LP insatiably seeks to devour the heart without any intent to mime otherwise, and this constant artistic behavior to fold a galore of efficient melancholy unto you, always comes with a dainty set of hands and a sober mind to command them, putting such crystal clear musical ideas into the nervous system that the inevitable emotional reaction you give to them is not necessarily of misery, - would be a terrible waste of that - as you are free to appreciate their musical cunning with a soul seeking no self-harm, too. Up to you. The record, - and me, too - we are both ready to see you suffer if suffering is your thing.

The release, of course, is slow like a half-eaten sloth that crawls to the ledge to end its torment, and the sound equally is super-similar to the metaface drawn by the relentless analog traditions of this sub-genre. The guitars are deep deep down and monumentally anti-reign like battle cruiser derelicts imprisoned by infinite wild space, - indeed, metaphors are sucking Magilla Gorilla's ass off - and the lead vocalist has all kinds of trouble in the throat and is not afraid to address them utterly and completely, and generally a healthy amount of this release comes to you as a truly robust testament of relentless harmonic soulcrushing. The Animal is in the harmony, bitches. The top of the heat this piece offers always comes through the most relevant harmonic constructs it is able to deliver, and, fortunately, they are working superbly. For the most part. This sentence demands explanation, and that should be given. Read on to find out more about the elaborate methods this piece seeks to silhouette your now-shapeless set of favorite pains with.


Melodically, this release has quite a strong marathon run demonstrated, and I personally feel it always has a superb grasp of its mere suction power, and administers the stimuli for optimum soulswallow effect thorough. Though the compositions are long on "paper" - the titular track clocks in at 33 minutes - the mere stance and agendas they communicate themselves with, are truly capable to bend time to their capricious will, so you are transported to a universe that has an entirely different concept of the flow of time than the one you are likely arrive there with. In other words : this release is not ridiculously long-, nor overwrought.

The melodies herein are oftentimes quite clever, - sometimes alibi, yes, like some folkish sequence I feel no reason to revisit - partnering up with gut-wrenching relentlessness to demand a reaction via the mesmerizing combination of deliciously dangerous harmonic passages and the tormented sonic timber of the monster-guitar that would rather lose its existence than its dignity, and if you manage to remain unaffected, chances are that you lack a heart or a set of ears, or all of those. As noted, the keen sense for simplistic-, but robust harmonic structures is the primer key element amidst the best tendencies of this delivery, and the absence of it - whenever it is absent - signifies the relatively weaker parts of this spin, in my opinion.

Mournful Congregation's latest is an eventful funeral with capacities to adjust your mood calibration through the set of top-form melodic patterns the album brings to the table, and, though I personally feel that the record has its fair share of less dangerous moments than I would prefer it to immerse me in all the way through, it still registers as a thorough-, pleasantly exhausting ride with a set of memorable peak moments. Do not forget, your mood is what you can end up with, and life does not give a shit. The proper album to silhouette your depression with, - if you have any - so you have a better grasp on the stuff. Kill or comfort your depression.

Rating : 9.0 / 10

If you want, check out my music

and / or

Buy me beer.

No comments:

Post a Comment

click on video to access in HD