Mourning Beloveth - A Disease For The Ages

Published May 08 2008

*=Staff's pick	The Sickness Trace Decay Primeval Rush* The Burning Man Poison Beyond All

Genre	Doom Metal	Darren	Vocals
Tracks	5	Frank	Guitar
Runningtime	56 Min.	Brian	Guitar
Label	Grau	Brendan	Bass
Release	12 May 2008	Tim	Drums
Country	Ireland	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	(early) Anathema, Candlemass

Irish doomsters Mourning Beloveth slowly roll you over with their fourth effort entitled A Disease For All Ages, also the first album with new bassist Brendan Roche. The band formed in 1992 and their production pace is as fast as their music with four albums in sixteen years, but that is not fair since the debut didn't see the light of day before 2001. This Kildare band plays doom with a touch of death metal and has been compared to early Anathema and My Dying Bride, but clean from violins and keyboards, and that is a comparison that I see fairly fit.

With five songs on an album with a playing time of approximately 56 minutes you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Mourning Beloveth are keen on the long songs. And if you are not in the doom mood, this album can appear to simply have long songs where nothing particular at all happens. However, if you listen and let the songs take their time to develop, you will find lots of elegant guitars which melodies lead the way. The guitars help to keep a light tone in the music that could otherwise had drowned you in its gloomy heaviness, because speed is not of the essence for Mourning Beloveth.

On the surface, the songs seem to be much of the same but as you listen they take their forms and Primeval Rush stands out with one helluva slow paced groove. It feels to be the most varied song of the album and even though it hardly can be reckoned as any up-tempo track, it is surely a refreshing song that comes out as very powerful and a slight Edge Of Sanity reminiscence comes to mind here.

Vocally, Mourning Beloveth mix up the vocals in their slow and heavy music with a combination of growls and clean vocals. And the parts with the clean vocals make the songs lift, as in The Sickness that moves forward slowly and heavy with growling vocals, but when the clean vocals enter the song surely lifts, and the new voice of Candlemass sounds like a close call. Nevertheless, in The Burning Man which has a texture viscous as syrup, even clean vocals cannot rescue it, and this is the one song that does not fall into my likening.

In my opinion, this album would have been better with the songs kept shorter. Their aim to create epic songs does not turn out that well apart from occasional portions in the compositions. This is surely an album that you have to take your time to listen to, it is mostly being enjoyable thanks to the intriguing guitar work, and even though it is nothing out of the ordinary, the guitars are simply just perfectly at the right place, all the time. If you are in the mood, this an album that is worthwhile, but if you are not it can become a torment, so make sure you are up for some dark and gloomy doom before you put this one on.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
5	3	4	5	4

Summary
4,5 chalices of 10 - Thomas