Come Mourning Come

First of all I have to clarify that I rarely enjoy a Funeral Doom-Drone release. However I decided to write for “Come Mourning Come” as it combines the mentioned above genre with Black Metal. This release comes from a one man band called Old Witch from the United States, that it was created in 2012. This is their first release which was released in May of 2013 only in a digital format, while until recently (December 2014) it is released in cd format by Sun & Moon Records. The album contains six tracks, one of which is instrumental, of overall duration of about thirty six minutes. So here the band presents a harsh, dark and atmospheric Black Metal, played in the speed of Funeral Doom with a lot of drone and ambient elements.

By the first second the listener can perceive the style and the music that Old Witch are playing. The riffs that he is going to come across are slow, simple in technic, atmospheric and dark. Although that the speed provokes depressive sentiments, the music on one hand creates that dark and dreadful atmosphere, on the other hand there are parts that they express power and passion, while the intense ambient elements create more serene images from nature that they show to the listener that depression and serenity can co-exist. The tracks are not longer than they should have been (they last from five to nine minutes). Their structure as you may have already understood by the style of the band is monotonous, with slow changes and slow progress. But isn’t that the characteristic element of Funeral Doom? The band though, through the slow progress of the tracks, it achieves with intelligent tricks to maintain the interest of the listener throughout the entire duration of the album. The instruments although that they don’t have to face the difficulties regarding the technic of the compositions, they have to deliver a lot of feelings in an intense way through their simple lines. So by using only the guitar, the bass and the drums, they deliver the atmosphere and the sentiments very vividly. The sound that comes out is absolutely clean so that both all the instruments and all the sounds that co-exist with them are audible. The mixture is balanced and it produces a very tight and solid result. The lyrics are written in English but they are not contained in the cd.

Old Witch have offered a very good result with their first full length album which achieves to drag inside the atmosphere and the feeling that it creates even someone who is not used to that kind of sound, as me. Surely what characterizes the album is the element of experimentation, something that makes him easy to accept to a limited group of people. However, those who will give it a chance, they will live a very weird but special experience. I can’t suggest buying this album but only to the listeners who are searching for more experimenting releases.