Almost three years after the release of The Book of Kings, Mournful Congregation come back to life with some new material thanks to this ep in which they propose, needless to say, half an hour of magnificent funeral doom. The compositional vein shown in the last full length is widely confirmed on this occasion, after all, the style of the Australian band does not provide ample melodic concessions, but not even a total closure or experimental ideas taken to extremes: as I had occasion to write, speaking of The Book of Kings, Mournful Congregation belong to the strand of the most credible and legitimate disciples of Thergothon, while refining the roughness in the light of technical capabilities of the highest level. Concrescence Of The Sophia consists of only two tracks: the title track, a splendid demonstration of class, able to continue for over twenty minutes without loss of tension thanks to an exemplary guitar work for cleanliness and contemporary evocative capacity, while the shorter Silence Of The Passed appears as an ideal continuation of the previous track although not equal, probably, in terms of emotional involvement. Assuming that it exists for someone a similar version, the funeral doom of Mournful Congregation can not be considered easy listening and is placed as a perfect synthesis between the current oriented towards more melancholic and immediate tones and one in which it becomes more explicit the sense of incommunicability and estrangement from real life. For those who were expecting a new album, there remains the awareness that one of the bands that symbolize the movement has not lost an ounce of its painful compositional vein, which makes this work much more than a momentary panacea or a simple taste of something yet to come: Concrescence Of The Sophia is a new unmissable and hallucinated descent into the leaden waters of a dark and silent cave with no outlet.

2014 – 20 Buck Spin