Ah,
doom metal, admittedly easy to play and
compose if you want your band to be plain and dry but that’s not
what these Greek dudes did, oh no. The quartet
from Thessaloniki
has been alive for a while but this is only their debut album.
It
took a long time for the band leader, Alex (bass, vocals,
compositions), to find an appropriate lineup since like doom metal, life
is not always an happy affair and sometimes many things can stop you
from achieving your vision. I’m glad that in the end, nothing could
stop Alex and his love for traditional doom. Let’s enter the temple
in his company.
The
seven songs of Forevermourn
are mournful affairs but they’re far from being timid slow numbers
full of despair. Tracks like “Remnants” are relatively mid-paced
busy songs full of twin guitar melodies recalling the heydays of epic
doom but The Temple is infusing this style with the depressive,
emotional style of Warning or
the current German doom of Cross Vault (that I personally thought to
be underwhelming). Alex and company are also adding slight black
metal touches to the fold in certain guitar moments and it’s
well done. What differentiates the Greeks from some of their peers is
the actual quality of their instrumentation, it’s heavy, never
whiny and soul
crushing.
Alex’s
vocals are clean highs that fits his music very well. There’s loads
of melancholy in the somewhat buried singing and
while he’s not on the same level as Messiah Marcolin or Markus
Becker (Atleantean Kodex), he gets the job done. I’d
say that like the songs, he’s a bit samey and some diversity
would had been better but there’s still not
a lot of weaknesses in the songwriting. I’m
not asking ‘em to add strings or whatever, this would be silly as
they don’t try to be My Dying Bride, but some tempo variations
could be cool. Nevertheless,
the identity they developed on this debut album is clear, it’s
dreamy but sad traditional doom metal.
Thick
basslines, memorable melodies, sweet guitar leads, I don’t want to
leave the temple, I’d mourn there forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment