Lament

This is not as good as everyone says, with the caveat that it's very good. Any accusations leveled at this release are completely fair and true: it's clearly made in a bedroom by two guys who think that just about all funeral doom is fantastic, and it has little style of its own, mostly taking elements from various other bands and smashing them together inelegantly into a whole that ends up more cohesive than it entirely should be. There's an inherent sort of ridiculousness about it that requires a certain of suspension of disbelief to really enjoy it.

And yet despite all this it's an excellent album. Abyssmal Sorrow heavily borrows from Nortt's style of 1:1 black metal and funeral doom mixture but does it a million times better than that project ever did by not artificially maintaining the grimness and instead going for full-blown Remembrance style musical drama. It is indeed cheesy beyond belief at certain moments and all the usual suspects are present: droning on single riffs for numerous minutes at a time, very cloying clean guitar lines, and a vocal performance that comes out just on the good side of Austere's side-splitting wails, but somehow it all just comes together. When you're in the proper mood, of course.

There's a lot going on in these tracks, though not as much as the (admittedly excellent) cloudy and delay-soaked production would imply. Abyssmal Sorrow has a certain talent for coming up with eminently memorable combinations of rhythm and lead guitar, and the vocals, while ridiculous, are just not-ridiculous enough to believable and contribute to the overall mood of the album. The tiny, fairly arbitrarily programmed drum machine is unobtrusive and provides just enough of a skeleton of rhythm for the guitars and bass to soak into essentially all the sonic space and create a massive wall of misty, weeping melodic texture that is legitimately breathtaking at best and very, very good at worst.

I guess the most important thing is that this is legitimately sad music, very, very sad and slow and essentially all the things that modern funeral doom should be. The band just manages to coalesce all the different musical elements together in a very natural way, and the pacing of the tracks is spot-on and right where it needs to be. Abyssmal Sorrow is great at stretching out a single riff ALMOST to its breaking point before bringing in a needed change. For a clear bedroom project, it rarely gets better than this.

Abyssmal Sorrow lacks the essential inspiration necessary to become a Skepticism or Thergothon, but easily comes out on top of the billion or so bedroom funeral doom bands vying for the second tier. The members of this band are anonymous but I'm guessing that they're the same guys in Austere, in which case they should really be doing this more than that project. This is very, very good and a pretty big surprise to me; this is one of the few cases where the funeral doom and depressive black metal scenes are correct in their assessment of a band. Absolutely worth a look.

Funeral doom is one of those musical styles in metal which I wasn't to familiar with about one year ago. But since a revelation called Nortt, I haven't been able to stop myself from the eager to check out new bands within the genre. I went searching for its musical history and its founders and not once I have regretted this. The warm (or should I say cold?) atmosphere that is created by the music and the depraved feeling that goes along with it, is something that cannot be topped by any other of the doom genres. It is because of all those things and because of the brilliant samples I heard, that I wanted to check out this album. And what a good decision this was.

It has been in my possession only about one day now, but since I've been alone at home for some time, I can turn this into my stereo and use max volume. Together with the latest Nortt and Longing for Dawn's "A Treacherous Ascension" the repeat-function delivers a great job. Here in Belgium the days are grey at the moment; the rain pounds hard against the windows, a thick fog covers most of the fields and a freezing wind whispers through the house's cracks and underneath the roofing. No better time to absorb Abyssmal Sorrow's soundscape-ambient-funeral doom and guttering voices from the depths and darkness of the human body.

With the tone set and the atmosphere created, the album fades in with a first song. Because Longing for Dawn was the previous band to send soundwaves through the empty house, the fading in wasn't really a problem. It felt like a continuing progression of the previous album, be it somewhat more dark and depraved. But I fear that an album that starts off with a fading in, isn't really that much of a joy if it just stands on its own. While the album continues, it strikes me that there's just too much fading in and -out. This isn't a big let-down, but it is the reason that prevented me from rating the album 100%.

But enough of that. The second song grabs you even more by the throat. An accoustic introlude and again the atmospheric, hellish screams of the deep. More of the same brilliance is to be found on the rest of the album - it's an experience that you need to undergo rather then just listen. With a more accoustic, instrumental song that could be coming from Caïna's latest, "Austere Lament, Pt. I" creates the ultimate landscape (hence the rainy soundeffects) for the last song on this almost one-hour trip to the silent void of the album's ending...

This album is utter majestic beauty, an intrinsic journey of life's depressed feelings and an existantialistic search for humanity's misery and pain. A certain warmth shines upon this music for all who is willing to see and feel it, and for those who won't... Well, your loss. Abyssmal Sorrow is certainly aiming for top ten material in 2008.

Abyssmal Sorrow, a fresh name in the funeral doom genre. 'Lament' is the first full-length they release after their 2007 self-titled EP. I took notice of the band because the man behind Deaden, their current label, recommended it to me heartily.The EP left a certain impression on me, but it never really got that many spins, it wasn't something I kept coming back to. However, when the samples for 'Lament' were released, I was immediatly hooked. I played these samples more times than the EP, they were amazing. Everytime I really got into them, they were cut off, so I was really curious for the album itself, it was more like going crazy.

When it finally arrived, I left it alone for two days, waiting for the right time to give this album the listening-environment it deserves. Then one night I put the album on in the background, just to get a first basic listen. I was immediatly gripped by the throat by it. The atmosphere of depression and misery that radiates from it is almost tangible. Even though I was doing other stuff during this preliminary listen, I was already taken away by the emotion dripping from this album.

But the album only came truly into it's own when I took a pair of headphones, lay down on the bed and immersed myself in the music for a more in-depth listening. It wasn't so much 'a listening' as an experience, the music completely pulled me under and covered me with a blanket of darkness and half-sleep.

The first song ended with a very abrupt, short fade-out, this annoyed me because it snapped me out of the stupor, but just for a bit, because when the second song 'Requiem for the Dying Moon' started, I fell once again and even deeper this time. There is an indescribable feeling I got at a certain point in this song when the clean guitar starts strumming these weird but beautiful chords ands the drums kick back in to build to a high point when the very subtle and atmospheric keys and later the second guitar fall in, it was something between puking, crying and an orgasm. On second thought, I'm not sure if it was the second song, everything passed in such a trance one song could have easily been the other.

The general sound on the album is fantastic, guitars and bass are just right, keys provide a delicate wash over the whole to add to the atmosphere without intruding too much, the vocals are deep and intriguing with the occasional high aural attack. I do have to say something about the drums, though they are well suited for the music, I would have liked to hear more definition, especially on the snare-drum, so it would be more of a snap each time it is hit.

I really don't have anything negative to say, but for the smaller 'problems' I mentioned earlier, the definition of the snare and the short fade-outs (which only really bothered me in the first song). Something that has got nothing to do with the music itself however: I don't like the coverart. I find it messy and the logo and title are badly placed in my opinion.

Anyway, these are only small drawbacks to a geniously crafted record, certainly one of my favourites in the genre and I say this after only 3,5 listens ...