Mournful Congregation - The June Frost

label: Weird Truth Productions, 2009

contact: www.myspace.com/mournfulcongregation

genre: funeral doom
hodnocení: 9

„Grandpa, how to go to a cemetery?“ „Go this way, my boy, but it’s far away...“ Well, funeral doom. Sometimes I say to myself it is such an injustice that this genre remains a periphery of a metal community’s periphery. It has been conquering just a few human hearts as if it felt good deep in the catacombs and actually, it doesn‘t need the sun (where zbytečný). In comparison with contemporary popularity of sludge and postmetal that are not so far from it, it’s more than perplexing. Quality music is often created out of the shine of spotlights.

If anybody of your friends thought Skepticism and Esoteric play slowly, recommend him Australian band Mournful Congregation. It will be the same contest as between a snail and a dung-beetle. A sound of a distant bell introducing the whole album starts an opening intro Solemn Strikes the Funeral Blood. It radically draws you deep inside the style of funeral doom metal that despite its frequent clichés doesn’t stop producing valuable bands. The second song in order, White Cold Wrath Burnt Frozen Blood runs for seventeen minutes, takes off slowly and ends even slower. It starts with a stagnant riff that is repeated through next three minutes, but afterwards the band (with its brain Damon Good) comes up with one strong riff after another and keeps listener’s attention in suspension. If I don’t take into account today‘s popular drone/doom bands (represented by Southern Lord label), I don’t remember such a slow record. Really, Mournful Congregation at first listen shocks with the ultra-slow paces that stretch like a fried cheese. Even a listener used to the typical genre ingredients will wonder why he can’t move. The June Frost paralyses the body, glues up the neurons with ruinous atmosphere, drowns you in guitar monolithic minor chords. It is not even possible to beat into the rhythm, because it stands still and a listener in these swampy waters literally prays for another beat into the drum kit.

Directly from the band’s title you can find out that the trio’s goal is to musicalize the mournfully beautiful states of mind. For them, funeral doom is not just a pigeon-hole anchored in fear of death and Hades, the band can work with these themes admirably. Finally, it sounds by no means desperately or negatively. It devours with its elevating ethereality and fascinates with a rousing mood. It is like a feeling when someone standing above an abyss could jump and wouldn‘t have to feel miserable. Sometimes Mournful Congregation draws from drone’s wrath, but this doesn’t dominate here, it’s alternated with a sharply sounding solo guitar that leads your eyes somewhere behind the horizon. This sound of a guitar evokes – with its softly sounding LSD melodies – the legacy of Disembowelment. Not even speaking about the British devastating Esoteric (in MC you can find up to four layers of guitarwork), but MC can¨t match them in extremeness and actually they don’t even try to. The band expresses itself with an exquisite musicianship, leaves behind genre savage primitivism; a lot of the acoustic melodies can’t deny the spirit of the classical music (see eponymous The June Frost). With this element they fall into the romantically oriented branch of doom metal that in their case doesn’t evoke pathos or kitsch. The record can also show off a fantastic sound production that amplifies the final impression with its depth and purity.

What to say to conclude? There’s not so much. The band made a big progress since the release The Monad of Creation. They got rid of possible competition by not having anyone who is genre related to them. Since Maniacal Vale there is again a record that demonstrates a vitality of the style. Mournful Congregation created a wonderful record that proved to me again that to cry sometimes doesn’t hurt.

MOURNFUL CONGREGATION:
Damon Good - vocals, bass, guitar
Adrian Bickle - drums
Justin Hartwig - guitar

8 / 60:17

tracklist:
1. Solemn Strikes the Funeral Chime
2. White Cold Wrath Burnt Frozen Blood
3. Descent of the Flames
4. The June Frost
5. A Slow March to the Burian
6. The Februar Winds
7. Suicide Chlor
8. The Wreath

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