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In Mourning > Monolith > Reviews > OzzyApu
In Mourning - Monolith

Taking In More Influences - 87%

OzzyApu, October 17th, 2011

A couple years after the masterful Shrouded Divine, In Mourning decided to take a more Opeth-influenced approach to their progressive melodic death affairs. While Opeth meander with a lot of writing going nowhere, In Mourning keep it precise and enjoyable. This leads to another batch of songs that, while not rivaling Shrouded Divine in melancholic atmosphere, do cater to fans of melodic death and melodic death / doom with ease and freshness. The compositions, as great as they are, don’t implode on themselves from an abundance of ideas. This is where Opeth fail hard, but In Mourning once again keeps it to the point with burly riffs, (at most) triple harmonies, and a fantastically gloomy atmosphere. It may seem like there’s enough melodic death already, but Monolith comes at it from an angle that isn’t from the same tired breed.

Netzell the same year did growls on October Tide’s A Thin Shell and in 2009 with Shrouded Divine. The man’s growls don’t hold any doubt, with their truncated grunting clear and corrupt. He also does higher, coarser growls / screams that share time with the rougher grunts. That makes two styles that he’s already nailed since he began his music career. A third one comes into play, which are his cleans, and compared to Shrouded Divine they’re damn good. Shrouded Divine I had to grow accustomed to because they were a little amateurish and experimental, while on Monolith Netzell is giving some depressed, mournful clean singing that expands the mood and flavor of each song they’re present on. They aren’t as common as the growling, but they are very rich and add depth to an album that would obviously be missing something vital. “The Smoke” is a prime example of the album’s ability to switch between the aggressive assaults of despondent riffs and the shred of optimism from the lavish clean sections (not abused in the harsh verse / clean chorus manner in any way - don’t get the wrong idea).

The clean production keeps the music from sounding too loud or overly modern. Instruments are all heard well together, and nothing overlaps to take out another instrument. Monolith, like the debut, is a warm album, so the instruments don’t give any chilly vibe. The strumming of the guitars and bass and the bashing of the drums create a dark atmosphere, sure, but the album is friendly since it’s so easy on the ears. Nothing’s brutal, but nothing’s melodramatic; the right balance is met. Riffs come from thrash, death, rock, and progressive metal, and next to those gruff riffs is the humble grumbling of the bass providing necessary fatness to the music. Few keyboard sections that enhance the eerie nature of the songs exist. Much of the melodies are thankfully given to the guitars, which drip with very doomy fervor and emotion. Drumming rolls and fills as one would expect with slow, mid-paced, and fast doom-influenced melodic death. Blast beats do show up, but are very rare, and instead let whatever the rhythm is dictate the type of drumming that would be effective. The drum kit (and this is very personal praise) isn’t tocky or thin, like a lot of bands tend to do. Modern bands up the volume on everything, but don’t fix the snare sounds, so there’s a mix between brutality and a tock-tock-tock snare drum (very irritating). In Mourning don’t go for that, so all the instruments sound as sincere and cuddly as they should.

Nearly an hour’s worth of despairing metal that’d get some love from fans that even border liking any of the genres of doom / death, death, melodic death, and progressive death. To see Monolith get shunned as much as it does is painful, even if I, too, believe it is inferior to Shrouded Divine. It’s a better album than people make it out to be, even while taking some more influences in and branching out. It won’t cover new grounds, but new compositions such as these do have something of value to offer.