Day: February 12, 2018

A little less than two years ago I expressed myself very favorably on the newcomers Ocean Of Grief, indicating them as a band with huge prospects. Not that it took a particular courage to launch into similar predictions, since the Athenian group exhibited unequivocally those same stigmata of talent exhibited by the best European act of melodic death doom, such as Enshine, Evadne, Frailty, When Nothing Remains and, of course, Swallow The Sun and Saturnus. Clearly, since Fortress Of My Dark Self was an ep, it was legitimate to wait for the results of a long-distance work, before decreeing the birth of a new star capable of flanking the names mentioned above in the empyrean of a genre that continues with regularity to give great records, both by established and emerging bands. Just a few seconds of In Bleakness are enough to understand that Nightfall’s Lament will perfectly live up to expectations: overwhelmed by the melodic afflatus of a magnificent guitarist like Filippos Koliopanos, there’s nothing left but to be moved by listening to songs of rare beauty like Mourning Over Memories, Painting My Sorrow and The Release Of The Soul; but this is only a preference due to infinitesimal details, because rarely the tracklist of an album can enjoy a quality so uniformly high. Just like Enshine, Saturnus or Doom:VS, the sound of Ocean Of Grief is seamlessly led by the melodic lines woven by the lead guitar and the result is equally exciting: the band founded in 2014 by the aforementioned Koliopanos and bassist Giannis Koskinas reaches with this album a level of maturity that will surprise, precisely, only those who had not already discerned the obvious prodromes in the debut ep; it is true, however, that the sound of the Hellenic has further refined and evolved to reach something very close to formal and compositional perfection. If someone will object that, after all, Ocean Of Grief are similar to this or that band (that maybe in turn draws heavily from someone else) the careless answer that is due to him is that indeed there is some truth, but between resembling and copying there is not a sea but an “ocean of pain“. Ocean Of Grief get a deserved consecration already at the debut full length and, in fact, Nightfall’s Lament is the classic album whose listening becomes more and more essential each time, in its function of cathartic vector.

2018 – Rain Without Ends Records