The Origins of Misery

Lamented Souls is one the longest running projects of Simen Hestnaes, better known as ICS Vortex, and is probably one his most obscure. Fans of ICS Vortex’s work with Arcturus will not be much surprised by the vocal styling on this album. What fans of his other work will be most surprised with is the straight up doom metal playing of his band mates.

The band play pretty straight forward doom metal with little frills or exciting surprises. Most of the songs structures come across as pretty juvenile: sporadic power chords interlaced with choppy drumming and bass lines and a few stoner-ish solos thrown in. The tempo stays pretty slow for most of the album, but a few tracks kick into a mid-tempo hard rock style a-la Lordi or Airbourne. “Demon Baby” and “Traces of You” show this mid-tempo style and even shows ICS Vortex using more of a tough guy gruff shout instead of his trademark soaring vocals.

As I stated, the music is mostly straight forward doom. The solos lean towards a stoner metal, laden with fuzz and flange. The bass lines, to me, are even more interesting than the guitar lines. ICS Vortex shows that he is not only a great singer, but a great bass player as well. The drums and guitars tend to plod along and sound very monotonous after the first few tracks. The saving grace of these tracks is the outstanding, otherworldly vocals of ICS Vortex.

ICS Vortex’s vocals are pretty standard wailing, kind of like Robert Lowe. His delivery and accentuation on certain words is outstanding and really has to be heard to be fully understood. If you’ve heard his solo album, then you know what his vocals sound like on this album. The only detractor on the vocals is the stupid wanna-be tough guy vocals on the faster tracks.

This being a compilation album, there are a few repeat tracks that aren’t much different from each other aside from production quality and such. The tracks from 1997 have best production, but the other tracks aren’t horribly produced. My biggest qualm is that the vocals on the older tracks get drowned in the mix and seem to be a bit trebbly.

Overall, this isn’t a terrible album, but it’s not a great album. Lamented Souls play relatively juvenile doom metal that really isn’t that interesting or groundbreaking on any level. ICS Vortex’s vocals are really freaking awesome on this album though. I saw this going for something like $125.00 on eBay a few months ago. Definitely not worth it. If you can find it for cheap, grab it and resell to someone else. This is a good release, but not worth the absurd amount of money that people are selling it for. Recommended to fans of ICS Vortex’s work, but only recommended for the vocals.

As a note on ratings for this review: 40% went to ICS Vortex's stunning vocal performance.

Well, I only concetrate on the first 7 tcks, cause they were recorded in 1997 and have a powerful production. The other tracks are recorded earlier (especially the last ones in demo-quality only) and some of them were re-recorded in 1997, so let's skip them here.

What we have is a great Doom act from Norway. And with Simen Hestnaes' voice, which I like to hear singing in this clean style, and some very doomy guitar riffs (done by O.J. Noir which is Apollyon according to this band info here, but the pictures inside the CD look more like Agressor, also of Infernö and Aura Noir fame???) you get a bunch very memorable songs here.

Tck 2 "Hybris" for its Doom/Rock'n Roll feeling and the very melodic/balladic "Var" are the highlights. Simen singing here similar to Mikael Stanne's attempts on Dark Tranquillity's Projector record. You can even say the first 4 songs rate between 90-100 points. The last 3 songs kinda lack this feeling, or I should listen to them more often ? Well, I prefer running the first four songs over and over again. So 80 points here from Germany.