ALBUM REVIEW: Where The Shadows Adorn – Mother Of Graves
This may be MOTHER OF GRAVES‘ debut album, but they’ve already appeared alongside the likes of TEMPLE OF VOID and MIDNIGHT, and been compared to KATATONIA through their In Somber Dreams EP. True enough, their brand of melodic death/doom carries all the hallmarks of the genre’s leading lights, and imbues it with real tragedy and misery. Named after a mythological Latvian protector of cemeteries and making music to honour the memory of a fallen bandmate, MOTHER OF GRAVES are a band all about mortality and loss.
The title track opens with sorrowful keys playing out a lilting and ensnaring melody, before guitars are invited into the mix, harmonising with that irresistible line. But before it can build any more, it explodes into a full band barrage of doom-laced riffs. When the vocals of Brandon Howe are added, you get a clear picture of what MOTHER OF GRAVES are all about, with each member playing their part in that melodeath/doom formula. There are more tender moments littered throughout the track, as everything slows or stops to allow a solitary plucked guitar to howl through, but there’s something disjointed about the way it’s been done here.
This is a problem that punctuates Where The Shadows Adorn time and time again. Rather than work to tie these elements together seamlessly, it feels as if they’ve cut and pasted disparate ideas onto each other. Take Of Solitude And Stone for instance – this song contains some of the band’s best features, from the intricate instrumentation to the bruising barrage. But as a whole song, there is very little in the way of flow. Instead of delicately interlocking the soft with the harsh, they just seem to ditch one for the other at the drop of a hat, which means that any tension and emotion built up on the mournful moments is just ripped out from under you as you tumble head over heels through big, brash passages of seismic doom.
Rain does a better job of cohesively combining these characteristics; there’s a gorgeous section a couple of minutes in that strips all the way back to a single gentle guitar, before adding in a layer of violins, then the drums and bass, and swells to one massive cathartic roar with the full force of the band behind it. Similarly, The Caliginous Voice ends the album with a measured and well-balanced mix of mellow and merciless. To come right at the end alleviates some of the frustration of this album and shows exactly what MOTHER OF GRAVES are capable of.
But in the end, Where The Shadows Adorn provokes no strong feeling as a complete album. There are snapshots of emotion and listeners will be sucked into some of the content here, at both ends of the MOTHER OF GRAVES’ spectrum. But for an album and a band so deep-rooted in emotional turmoil and tragedy, this record feels grey and nondescript. You can see what they’ve tried to do here and there are moments that are steeped in emotion, but they just don’t land the way you might hope. Individual parts are fantastic, but the sum of those parts leaves a lot to be desired.
Rating: 6/10
Where The Shadows Adorn is set for release on October 14th via Wise Blood Records.
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