The Sullen Sulcus

Mourning Beloveth | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Label: Aftermath Music
• ASIN: B00075VX0O
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,356,699 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A spectacular masterpiece of doom!, September 13, 2006

By 

Minx (University of Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sullen Sulcus (Audio CD)

This is undoubtedly the doomiest of the doom bands. Light and cheerful it's not, but the despair is heartening in the sense that it is so insightful (and well written) that it can bring you to tears.

The lyrics are sheer poetry - Irish nihilist poetry - but of a calibre most poets never conquer, much less heavy metal bands. Yes, all the songs are slow - this is doom, not speed metal! The music is consistent and beautiful, but also inventive -- you know to expect your head to be blown off in a slow manner with these guys -- but be blown off it will!

The songs are artful, and long--but never boring as they change the pace and riffs, always in an interesting and innovative fashion - all the while mixing in death and clean vocals. The sinister sound just mounts and mounts. They definitely have their own unique sound. Sullen Sulcus is more angry than Dust, but both are sheer mastery of doom and absolute aural pleasure and heartfelt anguish.

Add MB's crushing doom sound and these lyrics and the result is one of the most spectacular albums I have ever heard.

You MUST have this album if you are into this genre...! You'll love it... its definitely one of the great masterpieces of doom!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad, obscure, triumphant, March 21, 2005

By 

Tom Z "Crucible Of Steel" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sullen Sulcus (Audio CD)

As I'm sure you've surmised from the lack of reviews, this is a very obscure and unknown release. So congratulations, you obviously love your Doom metal or got very lucky to come across this album.

My first impressions were that the Sullen Sulcus was more or less the normal Doom expierence, albeit bleaker than most. What Mourning Beloveth do so well is capture the stark desolation that is the essence of Doom metal. This dark, brooding atmosphere is ultimately what makes this album grow on you with time. The swirling, dirgy riffs compliment the overall bleak theme of the album perfectly. The lyrics, while bizarre, are absolutly brilliant. Sometimes they are delivered with elegant spoken cadence and other times are driven by a gutteral shrieks and even occasionally sung. Mourning Beloveth are an entity all their own, but for comparitive purposes think My Dying Bride mixed with Opeth and Virgin Black. If slow, gloomy songs of despair are your thing than you definetly could do worse than this album

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Is it over yet?, October 23, 2005

By 

Ao Me Akuma (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sullen Sulcus (Audio CD)

Doom Metal is one of those genres that, when done correctly, can pull you down into depths of misery and despair that you never thought possible. Done badly, on the other hand, it can result in music so utterly boring that it'd be more likely to put you to sleep than elicit any sort of emotion.

Which is most definately the case with "The Sullen Sulcus" (one of the silliest album titles I've heard in a while). Upon listening to the first track, "The Words That Crawled," I immediately thought, "gee, this sounds a lot like My Dying Bride." Not just a little, but a lot, right down the spoken-word lyrics over heavy guitar riffs, only this time with an Irish accent as opposed to a British one. It made me think just what exactly makes My Dying Bride so great. It's because they carefully craft each song with varying tempos and structures, with innovative use of death/clean vocals and atmospheric keyboards so that you never get bored despite the long running length of their songs. "The Sullen Sulcus" has none of that.

EVERY song here is played at the same, dirge-like tempo; they NEVER change. For the most part, the songs on "The Sullen Sulcus" consist of slow, aimless, guitar riffs played without any hint of passion or emotion, laid over dreadfully tiresome death metal vocals that are neither unique nor interesting. The lyrics, perhaps one of the most crucial aspects in Doom Metal, straddle the dangerous penumbra between vaguely poetic and unintelligble gibberish. However, I've saved the worst for last, that is, that EVERY song is over ten minutes in length! Yet there is absolutely nothing to justify their length; there is almost no actual structure to the tracks, instead they just drag on and on until they limp and wheeze to the end and die. I cannot for the life of me recall how the tracks differed from one another, as they all blended together into one big, sludgey mass. There are no highs or lows, no shifting structures, just one big, long dreary mess that's a chore to listen to.

Heavy metal music can be cheesy, overdone, pomppous, or pretentious. But boring? I never saw that one coming. Stick to your My Dying Bride albums.