IN MOURNING
“AFTERGLOW”
Album Review By Jack Mckeever
7/10
By this point, one suspects enough (and perhaps too much) has been written about Scandinavia’s penchant for anything that may be shoved into the “progressive” or “melodeath” boxes respectively (or indeed, both). Like Black Metal in Norway, it’s become a cultural endorsement and evolution in the underground, and since 2000 Swedish quintet In Mourning have been proudly flying the flag. Stricken with both the overwhelming gloom and often exceptional melodic sensitivity of early noughties Opeth, In Mourning feel like one of those bands that will keep trundling along with support from a concoction of riveting riffs and immersive belief in what they create. With song-writing as good as it often is on their fourth full-length ‘Afterglow’ then that seems like a justified course of action.
The musicianship, production and fist-clenching riff-writing ability stakes its claim as obvious right from the get go with ‘Fire And Ocean’. The funereal but resplendently vast atmospherics on the longer-form ‘The Grinning Mist’ and accompanied by frighteningly jagged, brilliant rhythmic sensibilities from recently recruited drummer Daniel Liljekvist, and the track delves into a reflective passage that recalls some of Between The Buried And Me’s divergence into the same soundscapes. The dark balladry of ‘Below Rise to the Above’ is full to the brim with lightless but catchy melodies and is another highlight, as is the maudlin, slightly off kilter march of eerie Paradise Lost-esque misery on the closing title track.
It’s not so much that lack of variation is a huge problem on ‘Afterglow’, but some moments, like the tight-knit ‘Ashen Crown’ and ‘The Call To Orion’ come across as more linear re-constructions as the sum of their parts. In Mourning’s music has always been less about innovation than it is about atmosphere however, and although one not so invested in the subterranean dirge of that which lies beneath may start to find this record cumbersome after a while, that has almost always been par for the course in Metal music. Those that believe and indulge get swept up by it, and the masses reject it. It’s likely that that’ll be the case with ‘Afterglow’, but for those of us who are willing, who cares?
TRACKLIST
Fire And Ocean
The Grinning Mist
Ashen Crown
Below Rise To The Above
The Lighthouse Keeper
The Call To Orion
Afterglow
http://www.inmourning.net/
https://www.facebook.com/inmourningband/
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