Debut under the banner of a very traditional death doom for this band based in Gothenburg, of which through the official channels not much is known about the musicians involved. We must, therefore, draw on the always useful Encyclopaedia Metallum to find out that Sorrowful are a Mexican duo moved to Scandinavia some time ago, composed by I. Ishtar and Jorge Vergara, with the first, above all, already very active in the northern European scene (making himself known in particular with the excellent Dødsfall). It was said of a work devoted to the traditional sounds in vogue in the ’90s, when My Dying Bride and Anathema, above all, drew the guidelines of a genre that over the years, as always happens, would take several further ramifications. Sorrowful‘s sound is definitely effective as it is completely stripped of any gothic and decadent tinsel, and this in the end is a merit, for the undoubted consistency to a style that today can not be called fashionable, but also a flaw because, basing everything on a rather brutal impact, In The Rainfall maintains an appreciable linearity but that never leads to really memorable moments. The album is still good, but I’d recommend it more to the fans of caliginous and slow death (Asphyx-style, I’d say) than to those who, at the beginning of the ’90s, enjoyed milestones such as As The Flower Withers and Serenades. A good growl, supported by heavy riffs and some rare but successful passage in a solo key, are the trademark of these three quarters of an hour of good extreme music, which proposes in an appropriate and honest way those sounds that every now and then is good to be dusted off. Our guys show, even if sparingly, to have in their ropes also those melodic openings able to make memorable tracks otherwise monolithic in their progression: in this regard it turns out to be emblematic the excellent The Machine Of Desolation and partly also the following The Flight of Mind, while Gray People stands out on the rest of the tracklist with its deadly rhythms that bring back, wanting to stay in a current environment, to Greg Mackintosh’s Vallenfyre. To be noticed also the opener The Last Journey and Oceans Of Darkness, tracks in which Sorrowful manage to find a very good balance between the different components of their sound. All in all, an interesting album, especially for those who appreciate more the painful scores of doom when they are submerged by a hail of blows inflicted by the fury of death.

2015- Solitude Productions