Band:	Tomorrow's Rain
Album:	Hollow
Style:	Death doom metal, Gothic doom metal
Release date:	September 11, 2020
A review by:	RaduP

English version:
01. Trees
02. Fear [feat. Aaron Stainthorpe]
03. A Year I Would Like To Forget
04. In The Corner Of A Dead End Street [feat. Gregor Mackintosh, Sakis Tolis & Kobi Farhi]
05. Misery Rain [feat. Fernando Ribeiro & Mikko Kotamäki]
06. Into The Mouth Of Madness [feat. Jeff Loomis & Kobi Farhi]
07. Hollow [feat. Spiros Antoniou]
08. The Weeping Song [Nick Cave cover] [feat. Kobi Farhi, Anders Jacobsson & Lisa Cuthbert]
09. Fear [acoustic version] [bonus]

Hebrew version:
01. עצים [feat. Micha Shitrit & Shlomi Bracha]
02. פחד [feat. Riki Gal]
03. דורסי לילה
04. (בפינת רחוב חשוך (לילה לבן
05. גשם קודר
06. Into The Mouth Of Madness
07. Hollow
08. The Weeping Song [Nick Cave cover]
09. פחד שקט [feat. Riki Gal] [bonus]

Supergroup albums often don't live to the hype of the musicians involved. But there's another type of album to rival the supergroup album in the hype it can generate through the people involved: the star-laden guest roster one.

Closer to something an Ayreon or Avantasia album might be like, star-laden guest roster albums feature one or more members of the core group, and the guests, usually vocalists, appear all throughout the rest of the album. In this case, we don't really have a dramatic thing of having each musician play a sort of character, thus each of them is quite relegated to their own songs, making each of them feel like their own thing. This is the same approach that the only other album of this type that comes to mind used, but if Illuminati's album was an old school tech death fan's wet dream, this is a gothic doomster's one.

Featuring vocals and guitars from key members of bands like My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Orphaned Land, Rotting Christ, Swallow The Sun, Draconian, Moonspell, Septicflesh, and also Jeff Loomis and Lisa Cuthbert on the side. Basically if thought of a big "what if" roster for a gothic doom album, whoever you though of is most likely here already. An impressive roster indeed, and for a band's debut album formed by members who don't seem to have been part of any other famous band beforehand (unless you count Salem), suspicious indeed. But then again that was the case for Illuminati as well. Maybe that's just how these albums are.

Conspiracy theories of what it takes to gather such an impressive roster aside, it's quite clear that the actual musicians in the Tomorrow's Rain core band aren't amateurs. There are a few tracks with no actual guests, so in those moments when the band is relying solely on themselves we can tell if there's more to just an impressive roster to the record. And it seems there is, otherwise those musicians would've been embarrassed to contribute. But the band can definitely hold its own, and you can tell that they're experienced musicians who have been playing music of this genre for a while. For most of the album they drag the song to their own sound instead of trying too hard to craft the songs close to the original band of whoever is guesting on them, which is probably the best thing about the album. Because that means that if Tomorrow's Rain follow this album up, they don't need the roster as a crutch to make a decent record.

But the roster they have. And as much as I lauded the record for not compromising the band's sound for the roster, it is quite a double edged sword. The band's sound and songwriting skills aren't completely on par with the ones on the guest roster, and it seems that the guests are used in such a way that if I were to listen to this album without any knowledge on its lineup, I doubt I would've picked up on anything other than "this vocalist sounds familiar", even though a lot of them have recognizable vocals in the right context. And if it wasn't for the roster, I doubt I would've given Hollow as much thought as I do because of it. I still would, because I love the cover of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds's "Weeping Song", but that's mostly because the original song is great and Lisa's vocals on it are definitely the highlight in terms of guest contributions.

So while it's far from the best out there, it did get the best out there to have their names and performances attached to the record. Though Tomorrow's Rain wouldn't fare as well without the roster, they do prove that they can manage if need be.