Into the Depths of Sorrow

There are few that know the name of Solitude Aeturnus who speak of the band in anything other than respectful tones, some bordering on the reverential. These Texas nobodies are certainly deserving of whatever praise comes their way in any case, since they crafted a particular niche in the early ‘90s that sustained them well into the last decade, with the band sadly running out of steam a couple of years back. It is the group’s first three full-lengths that remain staggering to my mind, though each of them show a slight shift in character from the previous one and are by no means recommended to the same kind of metal fan. This debut, Into the Depths of Sorrow is an album that remains practically unequalled and inimitable more than 25 years on, influencing many bands who have struggled to match it for sheer scope, passion, and inventiveness.

Before my saliva overwhelms you all, I’d like to say that this is not nearly such a glamorous ride as the third Solitude Aeturnus album Through the Darkest Hour, nor does it aspire to quite the same lofty doom pinnacle as that release, although one might use all three of the words ‘lofty doom pinnacle’ in trying to describe it. Lest one forget, doom metal was still the baby of Trouble, Saint Vitus, and Candlemass in 1991, since doom death remained a nasty thought and a few demos for most of the year, so the fact that this plays out so little like any of those Sabbathian descendants marks it out as something special, fusing the flighty skills of USPM like Virgin Steele to an epic doom sound that really begins and ends with Candlemass, even if SA supported the Swedes wholeheartedly on this kind of album. The exciting thing about Into the Depths of Sorrow is thus that it has all the majesty and mystery of epic doom without sacrificing the pace and playing chops of more traditional metal, songs apt to peel off from holy vocal harmonies into squealing bouts of high speed melodic shredding.

You won’t need to read that paragraph again to know that the vocals are absolutely key to the formula, which Robert Lowe provides here with all the desperation and conviction of a prophet stranded in the desert. He has an incredible range and a bit of reverb to allow the vocals to push the slower riffs forwards, while there is enough grit to prevent this from being all smooth and solemn as happened to Adagio and some of SA’s imitators too. I don’t think he controls his voice perfectly, but for sheer drama there’s little to fault. The drumming of John Covington is pivotal too, especially since he plays a lot of quicker beats and some heavy double bass during otherwise downbeat sections, making this a more stirring experience than other doom albums. What really seals the deal, however, is the tag team of John Perez and Edgar Rivera, who lay down one of the most commanding guitar performances on any metal album I’ve heard. Although they don’t manage to turn every song into an entirely separate event, they do produce an astounding quantity of top notch doom riffs, changing about through crushing slow movers, pounding chugs, and softer acoustic sections, not to mention the bursts of pace that strongly mark ‘White Ship’, ‘Dream of Immortality’, and ‘Opaque Divinity’.

I’m sure it’s possible to critique the album for having a slightly predictable formula, because SA tend to go slowly into these epics (seven minutes each, give or take), put out all sorts of atmospheric and emotional feelers for a few minutes, then pounce suddenly at the mid-point to blast through a few solos. Of course, what with having only seven full songs and a couple of them – notably ‘Mirror of Sorrow’ – maintaining aching doom pace throughout, that complaint is rather negligible, whilst pretending that I can get bored when the music is this impactful is patently untrue. The epic quotient takes care of that, ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’ adding heraldic backing vocals and monkish croons to a lumbering chorus riff that eats into your soul, while the slower soloing strikes to the heart with its juiced up, sparkling tone. In fact, none of these songs stand up to any significant criticism, since if you like the style you will surely love the hulking progress of ‘Transcending Sentinels’ despite an unnecessary introduction, while ‘Dream of Immortality’ might well make my list of top 10 doom metal songs even if it were only made up of the beautiful solo section.

Commenting on an album like this always feels slightly superficial to me, since the quality is so clearly the combination of all the bandmembers’ talents and some great musical thinking, though I concede that this doesn’t think outside its own box quite as much as it could, despite that box being fairly discrete from that of other contemporary bands. If you are a fan of any kind of metal with melody or emotion, you should be clambering all over the place to get hold of this – sadly rare – jewel in the epic doom crown.

Creating a sublime synthesis of the elaborate and the elegant out of diverse conceptions of familiar elements, Solitude Aeturnus investigate the ponderous in these almost divine doom metal compositions of sorrow and despair, played with a solemn quality and skillful knowledge of the tradition. The beauty of their sound emerges from the interaction between singer Robert Lowe’s powerfully convincing, majestically soaring voice and the gorgeous weeping guitar leads that wash the music in a glorious melancholic rainfall of melody.

“I saw a sea of tranquility
At rest in the arms of the storm”

The perceptive arrangements of these tremendous riffs of regal misery and foreboding gloom anticipates the melodic enhancement of leads and solos, reminiscent of Candlemass in this application within the framework of doom, a band who were obviously inspirational to the Solitude Aeturnus formulation. Vocal style is also similar to those Swedish masters of doom, but Lowe distinguishes his approach through his incredible range and expressive versatility, showing himself a more naturally gifted and emotional singer whose performance here exudes class and passion of the type that is a revelation of awe when heard by ears tuned in to such expressive frequencies.

“Through raging winds and weeping skies
I sat in the loneliness of solitude
I washed my eyes in growing streams
Earth's resistance
True magnitude”

The music moves at mostly a slow, plodding pace, with an unpredictable tendency to burst into thunderous charges of speed metal riffs and double bass drumming, as in “Destiny Falls to Ruin” and “White Ship”, events that are graced with brilliant scorching solos of exquisite melodic quality. Songs are typically extended in duration but rarely excessive, though sometimes slowing momentum with too much stress on chorus iteration, a flaw usually offset by the band’s fantastic sense of tempo variation and dynamic rhythmic alterations. Within the typical depressed conceptual frame of the style, Solitude Aeturnus are able to vary the definition of atmospheric moods enough to keep their exploration of the mournful destiny of humankind insightful and genuinely observational in what is essentially epic melodic doom metal’s most quintessential demonstration.

I brought this album on a whim one day in 1991 in Our Price (remember that store, British readers?). I can't remember why, perhaps I had seen a good review of it and remembered it in the back of my mind, however back then money was limited, so it was a risk.

And I'm so glad I took that risk!

This album was not out of my tape player for about 4 days afterwards!

Solitude Aeturnus play, I guess, doom metal, but it's not an oppressive, depressive doom. It's uptempo & I find it uplifting & positive! There's certainly an epicness about SA & a bit of a heavy metal sound, too.

The production on the album is fine. The songs are well-crafted & the guitar work is excellent, but what really raises this album above others is the simply superb vocals of Rob Lowe (no, he doesn't live up to his surname!). Most will probably know him from Candlemass now, but I think that this is my favourite vocal performance from him.

As befits the epic sound of the album, the song length is (fairly) epic. The shortest song is just over 5 minutes & the longest is a shade under 8. There is a lot going on in the songs as well with tempo changes, acoustic passages, slow parts, fast parts (with double bass drumming) & just damn great solos that are superbly executed & full of emotion.

As for the songs themselves, they are just incredibly well-written, making this one of the few albums I actually find it hard to pick favourites on. However, my definite favourite on this one is Destiny Falls to Ruin with its great chorus.

This album has been rereleased twice now, so is one of the few albums I have 3 copies of on CD now, natch. On both re-releases are demo versions of Opaque Divinity & Mirror of Sorrow. Both sound good & are slightly different than the album versions. The Metal Mind album then has a version of Transcendiing Sentinels with the original vocalist singing. He's not bad, but he's no Rob Lowe! The Brainticket album has a rather murky (rehearsal?) recording of unreleased song, CIty of Armageddon. This one is a good up-tempo one, as fast as anything on the album. For me, that makes the Brainticket rerelease better, so if you can track it down, go for that one.

Perhaps Solitude Aeternus can do us a favour & re-record this on their next album!

So to sum it up, this is a superb epic doom album with wonderfull soaring vocals & great lead guitar work, and most importantly, fucking awesome songs! Fans of Candlemass should snap this up (if they haven't already).

And I'm so glad I took a chance on this album all those years ago...

"Into The Depths Of Sorrow" is the debut album from Solitude Aeturnus and my favorite from them. And in my opinion this is the best doom metal album ever created, and it's not too far away from being my favorite metal album.

Musically "Into the Depths Of Sorrow" is not too far away from the sound that Candlemass has (some useless info: the vocalist of Solitude Aeturnus is also in Candlemass nowadays), but this also has moments that are more power and progressive metallish, kind of similar to the sound that Fates Warning has. Tempo on "Into The Depths Of Sorrow" is most of the time slow, but this is a little bit faster on average than many other doom metal albums. And every now and then there comes parts that aren't that far away from thrash metal, good examples would be the solo and bridge parts on the songs "Dream Of Immortality" and Destiny Falls To Ruin". That is of course a good thing as it brings more variety.

Vocalist Robert Lowe does the best performance of the band here and his singing performance on this album is one of the best I have ever heard. He's voice has some similarities to Ronny James Dio's voice, but he is still far away from sounding like he would be a clone of Dio. Both guitarists John Perez and Edgar Rivera does a good performance here, both has some amazing solos and the riffing on this album is some of the best in doom metal. Their drummer John Covington does a good job on drums, nothing groundbreaking, but still a solid work from him. And the bass playing by Lyle Steadham is good too.

Production on this album isn’t the best productions ever made, but in some weird way it fits to this album quite well. It somehow creates a cool, somewhat epic feeling what this probably wouldn’t have if the production would be a lot more cleaner.

Anyway "Into The Depths Of Sorrow" is an amazing album, there really isn’t any big faults on this album if any at all. I will recommend "Into The Depths Of Sorrow" to everyone who likes metal and especially for fans of Candlemass this should be a real treat.

Highlights: Impossible to say as I like all the songs equally.

Simply put, this 1990 debut by Solitude Aeturnus is the best album I’ve ever heard. Their subsequent releases, especially “Beyond the Crimson Horizon”, came very close to matching it, but none were fully successful in doing so. This is one of those albums where everything comes together – vocals, songwriting, even the production – as weak as it is, it adds to the epic nature of the disc, something which would be lacking with a modern, ultra-crisp production job.

The style of music, as previous reviewers have noted, is doom metal with 80’s heavy/power influences. At times the pace crawls along, but other times it is quite up-tempo for the doom genre. The guitar playing by John Perez and Edgar Rivera is simply fantastic, and the drums, hobbled as they are by the poor sound, are still pretty solid. Then we have Robert Lowe’s vocals – once in a while he gets a bit overdramatic but for the most part he gives a performance dripping with such raw emotion that you cannot help but be impressed. His voice can get rather high, but it’s not high as in “squeaky/balls-in-a-vice” high. Perhaps “soaring” is a better word choice. Regardless, his performance on this album ranks among the all-time great ones, and is the main reason I like this disc so much. The band’s previous vocalist, Kris Gabehardt, is not even close to being in Lowe’s league – just listen to how much better Lowe makes a song like “Transcending Sentinels”. Then again, not many vocalists in metal can approach the level set on this album. Some reviewers may disagree here, but for me this is likely the best, purest, and most convincing vocal performance of any vocalist I have heard.

Speaking of songs, this album’s full of killer ones. Most of them are longer (6+ minutes) and quite varied so they never get boring. I’m a big fan of the semi-ballad “Mirror of Sorrow” thanks mainly again to Lowe’s performance. “Dream of Immortality” is also great, as is “Destiny Falls to Ruin”, the shortest track on the record (not counting the intro). Really, every one of these tracks here is superb. There are slow parts, fast parts, acoustic passages, double-bass sections, and so on – the perfect mixture of traditional doom, power metal, and 80’s heavy metal.

For a long time this thing was next to impossible to find; however, John Perez (their guitarist) re-released it last year on his Brainticket label, so scoring a copy should be pretty easy now. The re-release is the exact same save for a bonus rehearsal track. Nothing else was altered or remastered, preserving the original’s charm and epic qualities. Solitude Aeturnus have built quite a discography over the last fifteen or more years (hopefully the new one comes out soon), but nothing they ever did post-1990 could ever top this album, which is certainly understandable since very few albums released by any band in that same time frame even approach this in terms of sheer brilliance. Listening to a record like this is in some ways a little bit disappointing because you realize that we may never hear anything like it again. We can only hope…

Ye Entrancemperium pretty much summarised the general mood of this one... lots of 80s power metal influence combined with doom metal riffs - though a bit faster than average. The Candlemass influence is visible, but so is the Helstar for that matter, especially in the vocals.

"Dawn of Antiquity" is a little intro, which leads us into Opaque Divinity. Some spoken vocals then go into Rob Lowe's pretty unique screaming - sorta like James Rivera meets John Greely, but not quite either. Great heavy riffage marks the album, and there's a blazing solo too. "Transcending Sentinels" is also very excellent, and then "Dream of Immortality" - all of these songs are between 6 and 8 minutes long, with Dream the longest of the album at 7.52. It goes through a variety of moods, throwing in a great thrash riff around 3.54 that leads into another excellent solo.

Then, "Destiny Falls to Ruin" is the shortest non-intro song on here. A bit repetitive in the chorus, but there is a great transition between the slow first half and the second half, which is much faster. "I saw tranquillity, in the arms of the storm!!" Probably the most memorable solo on here. Then "White Ship" is also quite good, with some heavy riffs leading into a very fast solo section.

"Mirror of Sorrow" is a bit on the overlong side - probably the worst song on here, but still very good. Then, we have the closing "Where Angels Dare to Tread" which rides a very solid under-verses riff into a closing section with probably the most melodic solo on the album.

Overall, very excellent. If you like Candlemass, you'll like this. Also, older Fates Warning fans should have a good time with it too. Excellent stuff, very epic sounding without coming off as pretentious. Highlights are probably Dawn of Antiquity/Opaque Divinity and Dream of Immortality.