Band:	Mourning Mist
Album:	Amen
Style:	Avantgarde doom metal, Blackened doom metal
Release date:	October 31, 2020
A review by:	RaduP

01. Ancient Ruins
02. Isle Of Loss
03. Blindness
04. True Values
05. Betrayal
06. Instrumental

A memory from another time and a potential still unreached.

When Mourning Mist's debut album dropped five years ago, it was around the time I first started really keeping up with new releases, with this website and its reviews being among my most frequented sources. A lot of the names I first came into contact then had retained a certain fondness for me, with Mourning Mist being among the most recognizable especially because of their originality. We value that a lot here, especially since we have to dig through all those OSDM, 2nd wave BM worship, and funeral doom albums that are having a harder and harder time coming up with anything to set them apart from their peers. I still remembered Mourning Mist's sound five years later despite utterly forgetting about them.

Basically, as their original review here stated, they took the rulebook of blackened doom from Katatonia's Dance Of December Souls and threw it out the window. And they also added violins. So kinda like a blackened and more riffy version of My Dying Bride. And structures that sometimes go into more avantgarde and progressive territories, but not that often. More often that not, you'll have baritone incantating vocals over muscular doom riffs with a violin threading along than anything very blackened or progressive. Which isn't that bad, for the most part they still have a pretty recognizable sound, but here's where the unreached potential part of the intro comes up.

I liked their debut less because of how great Mourning Mist were as musicians, but because of how exciting the sound they created was, and more specifically how excited I was to see where they would take it next. I had to wait five years for it. And Amen really doesn't sound like that sound grew as much in that timespan. The performances are still sloppy at times (though the ex-guitarist departing and leaving all guitar duties to the bassist might have to do with that), the production, though definitely improves, still sound way too convoluted, and the songwriting still feels quite subpar. Most importantly as mentioned, those blackened and avantgarde bits aren't as pronounced. Don't get me wrong, they did improve in all departments, but not to the extent that would really make me feel as willing to wait an extra five years for something that might not even get them close to the level I was expecting them to get to.

Regardless, Amen barely got any attention, and even if it didn't live up to my expectations, it definitely deserves a bit of love and admiration even solely for how creatively and competently it incorporates the violin. And a lot of it still sounds compelling enough before a sloppy riff ruins it. I would've been more willing to give them a pass if this would've came out one or two years after their debut. But still sounding this incondite after five years? Sorry.