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Grave Flowers > Incarcerated Sorrows > Reviews
Grave Flowers - Incarcerated Sorrows

A bit on the boring side... - 60%

Lane, May 12th, 2012

Grave Flowers have blossomed for the second time, if considering by full length albums. It's been 5 years since the debut album 'Solace Me' was released. Gloomy emotive metal is what this Swedish band perform on 'Incarcerated Sorrows', nothing as doomy as in their demo era. This band is Godgory-man Matte Andersson's (voice, bass, also in Loss) personal project, helped by Jan Janson (Loss, Mental Crypt) on guitar.

Like their country mates Cemetary, Nightingale and Lake Of Tears, Grave Flowers perform sorrowful music, which on the one hand is metal, but also has hard rock influences. Simplistic, slowish riffs are backed by multifarious synths (e.g. piano sound or picturesque eerie synths) and acoustic guitars. Songs have a few parts in each and I find GF's compositions too slowly moving or happening. At worst times they are simply boring, and this factor is definitely the worst problem of the album. I can't comfortably sit for over an hour, because the band repeats their ideas too often. Male vocals sound a bit too weepy or moaning for my liking, but at least are quite unique. I can't say that singing is professional, because it isn't, and vocals are real yes/no thing. Generally, GF's music is melancholic, but not even close to most melancholic or emotionally sorrowful stuff I've heard. I can't call this highly original either. Playing-wise and sound-wise 'Incarcerated Sorrows' is good. Playing is fitting for this kind of music: not flashy, just basic. The album sounds kind of timeless, which is a good thing.

Grave Flowers have created an album, that does not fit to all frames of mind. Or maybe this springtime is not really suitable season for this. This is slowly moving and not very happening music, maybe even minimalistic at times, but it will grab listener if spinned a few times. So those who seek emotive music, should try 'Incarcerated Sorrows'.

(originally written for ArchaicMetallurgy.com in 2005)

Grave Flowers - Incarcerated Sorrows - 80%

Satanic_Warmonger, October 19th, 2005

I like this sad kind of metal, pretty upbeat though now and then but still has that Doom Metal type of appeal and gothic type of appeal... “Incarcerated Sorrows” is at times really pretty and depressing, then it can just become really epic with some thick heavy guitars playing a really gloomy melody combined with a lead guitar that in a sense guides or follows or now and then highlights the thick heavy melody, and not also not many solos really but still, expect a solo now and then to add to the emotional aspect of one of the various tracks on, “Incarcerated Sorrows”. It’s quite good and keeps you interested because of how much imagination and thought went into it, to me it feels that way. Some songs have a really synthesizer guided feel like the track “Fear of Future”, others just kind of rotate between heavy and calming like, “Lackrosy”, then you have the straight out hard tracks like, “Freeze the Time”, but even then the tracks don’t really stay in one set of mood or feeling, you can have something really hard and it just gets very gentle, or you can be listening to a track on this that is very synthesized then all of a sudden the synthesizer just disappears! Drums on this are nothing to talk about, nothing special. The synthesizers had a fantasy type of feel or in a way industrial type of feel. The vocals sadly really don’t have much variation, its just soft singing nonstop, which fits a depressing melancholy style but at sometimes it would sound better if only they used a grunt now and then or just not be so whiny, other than that, just very gothy soft singing kind of stuff that to me fits. Overall, a good gothic/Doom metal release from Grave Flowers, if you liked “Solace Me” by Grave Flowers, you will like this because its in the same vein….