ALBUM REVIEW: Mourning Light – Old Horn Tooth
Fans of slow, heavy music living in and around the UK’s capital will have no doubt found themselves at a show promoted by the London Doom Collective in recent years. Having hosted the likes of CONAN, DOPETHRONE, ELEPHANT TREE and countless other purveyors of low-slung riffage at their annual Masters Of The Riff festival and various one-off shows, they have now turned their hand to releasing music. With three quarters of LDC’s personnel also forming OLD HORN TOOTH, it’s no surprise that their first offering is the band’s sophomore album Mourning Light.
While OLD HORN TOOTH’s 2019 debut From The Ghost Grey Depths certainly had its charms, it was a little rough around the edges and at times seemed like the band were mostly striving to achieve slow and heavy for slow and heavy’s sake. Mourning Light is a different beast altogether. Everything from the quality of the compositions, the production, the vision, right down to the artwork has drastically improved. This is the sound of a band taking themselves more seriously and in doing so they have honed their craft.
Like their debut, Mourning Light consists of just four songs, with a total runtime of well over an hour. They’ve taken more than a few potent green leaves from the BONGRIPPER book in the way they let their songs slowly develop. A single riff may be played for minutes on end but during that time it will bloom as layers of fuzz, subtle harmonies and additional instrumentation are introduced.
Opener Precipice is a perfect example of this. After an introductory few minutes of feedback and fuzz, it’s essentially two crushingly heavy doom riffs – verse and chorus – drawn out over 17 minutes, with a quiet, introspective interlude in the middle. But there’s just enough clever interplay between the guitars, bass and drums to prevent the songs from stagnating in repetition. At this point closing a song by bringing in ‘the same riff but slower’ is a bit of a doom metal cliché, however that doesn’t stop it from being a devastatingly effective songwriting tool when done correctly, as OLD HORN TOOTH do here.
It also helps that there is a sublime, emotionally charged vocal performance on display throughout the album, delivered in Chris Jones’ soulful timbre, which is beautifully contrasted against his sludgy guitar tone. Themes of grief, loss and depression are handled with a poet’s touch. These are challenging issues to deal with and at times it becomes almost almost an uncomfortable listen, however there is also catharsis to be found for anyone who may be going through such experiences.
Second track No Salvation is propelled by Mark Davidson’s drums taking on a 3/4 shuffle feel and a riff which swings like a mammoth’s bollocks, this combination giving the track a darkly psychedelic undertone. It’s also dynamically vast, brooding and eerie during its quiet middle section yet cacophonous during its soaring outro, where Jones delivers an incredible acid freak-out of a guitar solo.
The atmosphere shifts again on the title track, which is by far the most emotionally charged song on the record thanks to the gut-wrenching melody which is practically choked out of the guitars to the point it sounds like they’re wailing in the pain of grief. Yet there are glimmers of hope in the lyrics; “No end in sight / Hold on for the morning light” sings Jones, almost reassuringly.
Closing out the album is the 22-minute epic, Invisible Agony. The track’s first five minutes are spent building the sense of dread and foreboding to almost unbearable levels, a sparse drum beat underpinning an eerie chromatic bassline and clean plucks of guitar. The tension is eventually released as fuzz pedals are stomped on and a monolithic slab of concrete doom comes crashing down. This slab is dragged in punishing fashion for what seems like an eternity before out of nowhere a cello line is introduced, its lamentation as refreshing as it is haunting. In the song’s final passages, a phase effect is added to the guitars, and with each sweep they become more distorted, like waves crashing against a cliffside until it eventually erodes, crumbling into the sea. It’s a stunning end to a monumental piece of work. London Doom Collective have set the bar high with this first release and it’s an exciting prospect to hear what’s in store for the future.
Rating: 8/10
Mourning Light is set for release on July 5th via London Doom Collective.
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