Ireland’s Mourning Beloveth are a band with a flattering track record in the particular world of darker doom, if we consider that their history started over twenty years ago. Until the recording of the previous full length Formless, in 2013, all in all the band was known to fans mainly for an excellent album like A Sullen Sulcus, as well as several good releases in line with the stylings of the genre. With the last work, however, had been impressed a decisive turn towards sounds that drew more from the musical tradition of their land of origin, not so much referred to the folk as to a peculiar epic mood. In particular, the elective affinity with Primordial emerged in all its splendor, making Mourning Beloveth a slower version of Averill’s band, but equally fascinating and personal. Rust & Bone is a further and perhaps final evolution of the band coming from Athy: Mourning Beloveth are no longer, in fact, a death doom band in the most conventional sense of the term, because, although the long opener Godether highlights for good part passages ascribable to the genre, it is the overall atmosphere that has changed: the blunt pain is replaced now by a suffering with proud and solemn traits, now by a melancholy preparatory to a serenity illusorily close but unattainable.
When Godether opens melodically, around the eighth minute, emotions break the banks and it won’t be possible anymore to contain them until the last note of the album. Compared to Formless, Mourning Beloveth have opted for a greater synthesis, since Rust & Bone lasts less than half of the previous work, but here there is not a single second wasted: even the two short interludes Rust and Bone are functional to the cause, going to introduce the other two pearls The Mantle Tomb and A Terrible Beauty Is Born. The first one starts as if it were an outtake of that absolute masterpiece titled A Nameless God and, when Frank Brennan’s voice enters the scene, there are no doubts that this track will drag us into an emotional vortex from which it will not be easy to recover. Alternating with the robust growl of Darren Moore, the evocative singing of the guitarist leaves no way out, until the “primordial” vein of the song does not dissolve into a second instrumental part in which the lead guitar goes to rummage irreparably in our soul, annihilated by so much beauty as well as scarred by the desperate scream of Moore. A Terrible Beauty is Born closes the album in a similar way to the long Transmission, a track that occupied the entire bonus CD of Formless: the cue of that acoustic episode with blues traits, here is perfected and made in a way that accentuates the pathos and clarity: Brennan’s interpretation makes all the difference in the world, giving the song a rare and precious intensity. Rust & Bone is the album that definitively consecrates Mourning Beloveth: the Irish band, with an album of this thickness, goes well beyond the borders littered with thorns of death doom, reaching a form of lyricism that goes beyond any genre definition; hard to do better than that, really.

2015 – Ván Records