(written by Islander)
The Italian metal band Eternal Mourn is a new name, but their lineup is a group of experienced musicians whose resumes include participation in Black Oath, The Rite, Extirpation, Funest, Araphel, and Demonomancy. In this new formation (as their name suggests) they’ve paid homage to the great death-doom traditions of the ’90s as expressed through the music of Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Anathema, and Cemetary.
Of course, many other bands have drawn upon those august influences over the past decades, with widely varying degrees of emotional power and memorability. Eternal Mourn’s debut EP Winds of Sorrow stands out from the pack. These first three songs don’t sound like a debut release. They are so well-crafted and so expertly executed that they sound like the work of people who’ve been delving into this kind of music for a long time, and the results are unmistakably desolate but still head-hooking, spine-shaking, and even mystically beautiful. They are also immediately memorable.
Those are among the reasons we quite enthusiastically agreed to premiere the EP today in advance of its July 21 release by Terror From Hell Records. More reasons follow….
On the EP’s opener “Falling Tears” Eternal Mourn create a metallic musical alloy heated by pain, cooled by grief, and powerfully hammered into shape. They deliver ragged roiling riffs, slugging body blows, and rocking beats that can’t be resisted, along with deep, reverberating death gutturals that would scare Cerberus.
They also deliver slowly slithering melodies that wail their miseries, like serpents of sorrow, as well as ringing notes that mourn and weep. They brutishly stomp with earth-quaking heaviness as the music dismally moans and wrenchingly soars. And they surge into bouts of hard-charging aggressiveness and harrowing howls.
“Falling Tears” is equal parts frightening and fraught, ferocious and heart-breaking, and like all the best songs it’s both very catchy in the moment and very memorable in the aftermath.
“Falling Tears” flows seamlessly into “Embracing Tragedy“, which begins spilling grief immediately as enormous chords groan and clang and a dual-guitar harmony sends its piercing sorrows high. The pace is staggering and the slugging slower, though the drums still go off like gunshots. The layered guitars channel wistfulness and yearning, even as the vocals plumb monstrous depths.
Eternal Mourn’s songwriting dynamism also becomes evident again when they escalate the pace and the clear-toned riffing begins to rapidly shiver and feverishly squirm. Eventually they escalate further, driving the music with vividly popping beats, an urgently throbbing bass line, and heated fretwork that jubilantly darts and swirls; and yes, in a song beset by grief, this closing part does sound joyful (and it’s a big muscle-mover), though it’s segmented with a guitar solo that slowly traces the fall of tears.
Those first two songs are so captivating in changing ways that one can’t help but feel a bit sad that only the title song is left before the EP will end. As its name foretells, the song begins with the sound of a cold wind and a ringing melody of sorrow. The sound also becomes orders of magnitude heavier as the rhythm section slug and whip-crack again (you might feel your bones throb).
This final song also includes a more gentle and even elegant interlude, and for the first time the music includes singing, a quite heartfelt and quite good lead voice in front of choral cries (the vocals on this song include a guest contribution by A.Th of Black Oath). After that, the band start jabbing faster and injecting spurts of unnerving melody, before shifting gears again.
The gear-shifting continues, as the pace speeds up and then really slows down into another staggering march so that both voices and guitars can wail at the center of the stage before the curtain falls.
One last thing before we share the full EP stream — a statement from Eternal Mourn about their EP:
Winds of Sorrow is an EP consisting of three medium-to-long tracks (averaging seven minutes each) and marks our first studio release as Eternal Mourn.
The songs came together naturally, yet we meticulously crafted every single note, focusing on the aspects of life we wish to express through our music: grief, bitterness and personal decay.We worked on this with great care; over a year of rehearsals, we shaped this release by infusing it with our own personal touch as musicians, while also paying homage to the genre we love most: 90s doom/death metal. While the influence of the greats (Katatonia and Anathema..) is certainly present, the music retains our own distinct identity. The result is exactly what we set out to achieve: music that is mystical, decadent and dark.
ETERNAL MOURN is:
Drummer Debla
Guitarist/vocalist Gabriel (Black Oath, The Rite, Extirpation)
Guitarist Eros (Extirpation, Funest)
Bassist/vocalist Santo (Araphel, Demonomancy)
Winds of Sorrow is available for pre-order now via Terror From Hell Records on CD and digital formats.
PRE-ORDER:
https://terrorfromhellrecords.bandcamp.com/album/winds-of-sorrow
https://www.tfhrecords.com/terrorfromhell/
ETERNAL MOURN:
https://www.instagram.com/eternal_mourn/