Mourning Dawn – The Foam of Despair

Mourning Dawn is a French Black/Death Metal trio that I personally have been lightly stalking since the release of their Waste EP back in 2017. I remember commenting back then about how the EP was both well written, powerful and with a strong emphasis on the human condition (namely loss, depression and the ongoing melancholy) – And I am pleased to remark that they have not lost this very apt and current nihilist world-view. As a matter of fact, they have only perfected it since then and now, at the cusp of the next year, their sixth Full-length record will be released under the name The Foam Of Despair.

Now, what truly impresses me about Mourning Dawn (I seem to recall pointing this out last time around as well) is the fact that they somehow manage to take a genre that I personally find to be very overplayed and generic and somehow make it unique and memorable – There are a lot of Black/Death Metal hybrid bands out there and while a significant amount of them make very decent music (several of which I have even seen live), after the fact I often struggle to recall even a single title track that I can connect to the bands name. Hence, they somehow end up becoming this big, amorphous blob of a genre, filled with tracks and names that I cannot distinguish from one another – Not so with Mourning Dawn.

Mourning Dawn manages to take the crippling loneliness of the human condition, put it into words and express it while at the same time hammering it home with powerfully oppressive drums, near-screaming guitars and frustrated vocals. I get the strong sense of a man angry at the world due to its indifference and it appeals to me on a personal level. To such as length that I had to play it twice in succession just to get enough feedback to write this review, since the first time I got so lost in the musical soundscape that I missed out on most of the details, lost inside my own head.

And that for me, will always be the mark of a great album, regardless of genre.

On top of that, the three musicians decided to pamper us even more by making the seven track long album fifty-two minutes long, above the genre average. Again, something I will always applaud. And, as an added bonus, on YouTube they even shared their first Single from the album with us, entitled ”Blue Pain” – Link below.

Recommended for fans of Ahab, Bethlehem and Batushka.

https://www.facebook.com/MourningDawn

https://mourningdawn.bandcamp.com/