Moving Crosscurrent of Time

With Moving Crosscurrent of Time everybodies favourite originality-free Russian melodic doomsters The Morningside return for a second slab of various worship pieces. Clearly self conscious of basically being Brave Murder Day the band has played up the Agalloch influence and proudly incorporated more than a hint of later Woods of Ypres to the mix, subtlely telling the world "Hey, we don't just worship Katatonia in these parts. Not to say that element is gone, not in the slightest, most songs have multiple passages built around repetition of a couple of notes in the Swedish masters style, but the general mood has been lightened to feel more reminicent to Agalloch's last album or to Woods III.

This is still more or less an originality-free album, the number of influences has ballooned to at least 4 or 5 bands since the debut, so it's not half as in your face with it as before, but those hoping the noticeable change in music would mean a shift to something fresher will be disappointed. This a more upbeat melodic affair, focussing around more complex lead melodies rather than simply aping Katatonia's technique of repeating strings of sad notes in a melodic fashion. Along with this the band has added in quite a few more neck-cracking chugging riffs to back up the prettiness, although only in an easy on the ears melodic sense, in fact it feels a little manipulative and poppy like later Woods of Ypres. Luckily, just like when they were an unofficial Brave Murder Day cover band, they do it all quite well, and as predictble and second hand as it is, the music on here is pretty much always pleasant and well composed. When the band wants you to to be carried away by a soaring lead, it works, when the band wants you to nod your head to a heavier section, you will, and when it does want to sound sad it will successfully suck a little warmth out of the room, and really, thats all you want from a band like this.

Performance and sound wise the band and production are both pretty solid. The sound is very clean and whatever hints of black metal where on the debut are more or less gone, but it plays into the album's advantages focussing in on the lead guitars and not expecting you to care about much else. The band plays this simple music with no troubles or mistakes and successfully achieves thier target sound no matter how low an aim it may be. The only possible weak link I can find is the vocalist, who sounds like he's trying too hard to get his troll voice working, and the resulting croaking is pretty insincere. It sounds as if Igor Nikitin is making the voice with his mouth rather than his throat, and it sounds like something you'd expect to hear a villian sound like at a childrens puppet show. Adding to his woes are his lyrics which are often laughable enough, but are then distorted by his goofy accent to make the whole ordeal sound pretty silly. Luckily though, the vocals take a back seat to the pretty lead work and they fail to become too much of a hassle.

The band has changed up their sound from last time, but not enough to really make them stand out on thier own, and it's basically impossible to praise this album without constantly bringing up those same Agalloch, Woods of Ypres and Katatonia influences. This is melodic, this is pretty, this is a quality composition and thats about it. If you're a fan of any of those bands I highly recommend you give The Morningside a listen, it's pretty much exactly what's expected, but it's good.