ALBUM REVIEW: The Loss Of Beauty – Shores Of Null
Anyone who has been paying close attention to the gothic and doom orientated corners of extreme metal should already be familiar with 2020’s Beyond The Shores (On Death And Dying), the quite frankly fantastic third album by SHORES OF NULL. Being one near 40-minute long track, it took in everything from gothic flourishes to death-doom and black metal, and was arguably one of the highlights of the pandemic album-wise. Recorded during the same sessions as that album, and initially intended to be released prior to it, the band’s latest, fourth record, The Loss Of Beauty, is another stand out record in their growing catalogue of excellent releases, taking the sort of brilliant elements that were present on the album it is paired with and presenting them in a far more streamlined and punchy format.
The short and epic Transitory is a brief instrumental piece to ease the listener into the album before the first full song Destination Woe kicks in. This is an ethereal slab of gothic doom with polished guitars, soaring vocals and dense gutturals that lend a darkness to proceedings, making for a powerful introduction. The Last Flower amplifies the catchy elements of the previous song, with faster passages lending this a sense of urgency as great leads and haunting vocals provide a focal point that makes for a great, punchy offering. Darkness Won’t Take Me leans prominently into the band’s slower, doomier side, with ponderous hooks and steady rhythms creating a bleaker feel. The thicker guitar sound adds a depth to the music, whilst still possessing a lighter edge, and the resulting track is melancholic but accessible.
Nothing Left To Burn, with its dancing guitar harmonies, shifts to a funereal crawl, with expansive blackened sections adding a domineering intensity, gradually becoming a weightier piece of death-doom without ever losing the majestic qualities that this track began with. Old Scars adopts a quickened pace and sombre leads, setting a morose tone around which the visceral, wide-ranging vocals are centred. Jumping from sonorous cleans to acerbic, snarling growls, this track is carried significantly by its vocals, although there is decent guitar work peppered liberally throughout that adds an epic flourish. The First Son, another instrumental offering, is a cinematic break that brings in haunting pianos and cellos, serving as a brilliant gothic interlude before A Nature In Disguise roars into life on a sea of jarring, blackened guitars. Where the first half of the album was polished and angelic, this is harsher, the gothic doom being coloured by something more sinister as it blends gutturals and cleans together seamlessly and allows fiercer influences to come to the fore.
My Darkest Years pushes the previous track’s death-doom intensity even further. Rabid guitars, punishing drumming and throaty gutturals dominate the sound, with only some cleaner vocal passages capturing the lightness of earlier numbers. Fading As One keeps the angular guitars of the preceding two tracks, but calls upon a broader range of influences to craft a vibrant and diverse piece of music, with imaginative and borderline progressive leads, intricate drums and varied vocals making this a noxious brew of different elements that works extremely well.
A New Death Is Born, with its percussive drums, rumbling bass and tight, heavily melodic guitars, is a great track that embraces hypnotic cleans and bestial roars that make this a lively and confident affair, leaning heavily into the extreme metal within the band’s sound for its more driven parts. It’s got the visceral qualities of a great, catchy black metal track, whilst possessing a brooding gothic undertone. Underwater Oddity, by contrast, is a fairly stripped back offering, with huge rhythms and spartan hooks placing the focus back onto the vocals which meander in and out of death metal, the ebb and flow of aggression making for an immersive listen. This is followed by Blazing Sunlight, one last short instrumental piece, dripping with atmosphere and built around repetitive pianos that are evocative of Beyond The Shores (On Death And Dying), thus establishing the musical link between these two excellent albums.
Creatively surpassing an album of Beyond The Shores‘ scope was always going to be a difficult to do for SHORES OF NULL, but they have managed to, if not surpass it, then at least produce something almost equally as magnificent with The Loss Of Beauty. This album, being created within the same recording session, is inevitably always going to reside within the shadow of its predecessor somewhat, which is a shame, because this features some of the band’s best material, with truly impressive guitar work and vocal performances especially making these songs great. The pianos, cellos and violins should have featured more prominently, as they proved a great addition on Beyond The Shores and provided some of the album’s most dramatic moments. With The Loss Of Beauty, SHORES OF NULL have produced their second world class record in a row, a trend that will hopefully continue with album number five.
Rating: 9/10
The Loss Of Beauty is set for release on March 24th via Spikerot Records.
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