Band:	Eternal Mourning
Album:	The Resident Sadness
Style:	Gothic doom metal
Release date:	2003
A review by:	Undercraft

01. Intro (Infinito Da Dor)
02. Inside Mask
03. My Resident Sadness
04. Limonin Kiss
05. Sun Of Superficiality
06. Without Regret
07. Walk Of Misery
08. A Different Instinct
09. (The Burning) Mirror

Beauty in simplicity

Let's be honest here, nowadays is hard to find innovative bands that break moulds and establish new genres, but think about this, if innovative bands released material each year, we would be tired of that too! So there's no winning for us music addicts, we always want more and much better.

But we have to learn to appreciate the beauty in simplicity and in repetition.

Eternal Mourning doesn't deliver a new formula in any way, and the final product is not ground breaking or genre defying, the thing with this Portuguese band defies any logical explanation.

Doom Metal as a basic premise. Add some female vocals, some growls, a viola and melancholic themes. I just described a zillion bands out there, but the main difference with Eternal Mourning is that they do it with style!

The band really tries to create an appropriate atmosphere to channel the melancholic vibe of their music, and they succeed at it and despite minor flaws (like the production) this is an enjoyable album. Like I said before, expect no greatness here, just expect good music.

The band relies on the varied vocals, you got the growls, the clear male vocals and the female angelic vox, the different styles intertwine in each song, and together with the viola the songs can be very gloomy. Countering that we have some harsher parts to avoid sleepyheads, take for instance the awesome "Inside Mask" one of my favourites songs in the album, the gloomy parts are countered by some rabid blast beating in a section of the song. The rest of the album follow this formula with some variations along the way.

Finding the beauty in simplicity is the lesson for today. An album doesn't have to be the weirdest thing that you've heard to be good.
Eternal Mourning released an album with some particular clichés of the genre, but nevertheless they created a enjoyable piece of music. Fans of the after mentioned style should get this.