Review The Sorrow - Origin of the Storm 2009

Tracks
1. Apnoia
2. Where Is The Sun?
3. My Immortal Guardian
4. Scars
5. Eyes Of the Darkness
6. Raising The Devil
7. Anchor In The Storm
8. From This Day On
9. Heaven Is No Place For Us
10.Tempestuous
11.Collector Of Tears
12.Faceless
13.Day Of The Lord

Band:
Mathias Schlegl (g&v)
Andreas Mäser (g)
Dominik Immler (d)
Tobias Schädler (b)

Discography:
Blessings from a Blackened Sky (2007)

Info
produced by Toni Meloni & The Sorrow

Released 02/27/2009
Reviewed 02/24/2009

Länkar:
thesorrow.net
myspace
drakkar

Well, Austria, isn’t that usually much connected with downhill skiing, isn’t it the current world leaders in alpine skiing that hail from Austria? But what does sorrow has to do with good skiers that usually wins some things? Actually it really has nothing to do with each other but the do have one thing in common, Mario Matt, Hemann Maier and The Sorrow and that is the fact that they all hail from this small nation in the Alps, the nation called Austria which has a red and white flag.

Musically you can almost hear the vastness of the mountains and the snow covered peaks as well as the dark wet rocks in springtime as you start this very record. It is quite hard to describe the music of the band, it is heavy and rough but at the same time it is quite melodic. It is deep, dark, cold, aggressive, powerful, elegant and whatever else you find appropriate. Maybe you could say that the music suits the environment from which the band hail, much like the music of Mozart or Beethoven suits the very same nation but these two are centuries apart and frankly they are not even close to one another in quality.

So, which one is the best, the old composers or the younger band? Well, do I really need to ask that question? Not really as the old masters are still much better than what this band can muster. Sure this record starts in a very promising way and it hold its own for some time before I slowly but safely start to loose interest. The real problem about this record is that is is too long, too many minutes to clear before the record stops spinning. Another thing exaggerating this fact is that this promo record is divided into 100 tracks which makes it very hard to separate the tracks from one another and makes it impossible to realise which tracks are the best.

I have a suggestion to make this a better album and that is to cut away the excess luggage which means about half the album, 50% or 60% of the album would really be enough. The album unfortunately turns duller for each time I listen to it, the length of record that remains interesting gets shorter for each time I listen to this record, that is quite sad as it promises so much when it begins.

Well, to return to the parable about the alpine skiing stuff, I would say that it is like the skier that falls at the third gate (Jens Byggmark perhaps) and then slides slowly all the way down in a boring slow slide all the way to the finish line. But as you know he will not get a result, it is much the same when it comes to this record.

Now then, the rating will of course be low and it may not be a complete failure but it is surely not a very good album, not an album I can enjoy very much but there is a slight chance some part can be good. This is a record that is below average.

HHHHHHH