ALBUM REVIEW: A Path Beyond Grief – Northless

Grief has always felt right at home in the overlapping worlds of post, doom and sludge metal. You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again but it doesn’t matter because it just works. With a myriad of great examples from this year alone, this match made in misery finds its latest iteration in the hands of Milwaukee sludge metallers NORTHLESS and their fourth full-length album A Path Beyond Grief. It may not be the most original idea you’ve ever heard, but the quality is never really lacking. This is weighty, considered sludge which has more than a couple of tricks up its sleeve.

Expanding on the title a little, A Path Beyond Grief is an album dedicated to all those who NORTHLESS‘ founder, guitarist and vocalist Erik Stenglein has lost over the past few years. It’s a relatable theme, with Stenglein‘s grief manifesting in a variety of ways across these seven tracks. Often, and predictably, there’s real pain and fury here, especially in his harsher barks and bellows. Elsewhere though, such as in the thunderous beginnings of the title track and first song proper, it takes on more of a powerful sense of melancholy – a kind of mournful melodic doom that has worked so well for a band like PALLBEARER for a while now.

In fact, PALLBEARER aren’t a bad comparison for this in general. NORTHLESS definitely have a slightly nastier streak, but they also often offer a similar sense of progressive grandeur. Perhaps throw in some of the more violently sludgy sides of early MASTODON or BARONESS, and a few bursts of extremity that a reference like CONJURER might start to capture and you should have a pretty good picture of what happens on A Path Beyond Grief. Third track Forbidden World Of Light may well offer a bit of all of this at once even. It’s an eight-minute beast, riffing, rumbling and squealing through its dynamic runtime without ever feeling like a slog.

The bar arguably rises further still from there too. Fourth track Carried is a firm contender for the best thing on here. It takes the urgency up a notch or two with something of a CROWBAR-esque rager, with an even more heightened ferocity carrying through to the windy riffs and blast beats of Of Shadow And Sanguine which follows. Perhaps quite naturally, Stenglein‘s vocals often become something of a focal point throughout A Path Beyond Grief. His delivery is predominantly pretty apoplectic, tasked with hammering home the record’s weighty themes and stakes. He also has one hell of a chanty bellow on him too though, as we hear perhaps most obviously of all on sixth track What Must Be Done.

Maybe NORTHLESS had a bit of home run on their hands here in the first place. As we said at the beginning, there’s something about the combination of this music and the concept of grief that just makes sense. The band still had to nail it though, and nail it they most certainly have. A Path Beyond Grief hits with the weight its themes deserve. There’s enough ebb and flow to keep things interesting, and the 43-minute runtime feels spot on. We’ll say it again, it just works.

Rating: 8/10

A Path Beyond Grief is set for release on July 22nd via Translation Loss Records.

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