Gloomy Sunday - Beyond Good And Evil (CD)

Review
Metalcrypt
3/5
23.08.2007

Well I wondered why no doom band had ever named themselves or an album after the so called 'Hungarian suicide song' of Rezso Seress from 1933, and now finally they have. This song for those who aren't aware, when originally released, was the supposed cause of a spate of suicides soon after the listeners had finished listening to it, rendering it too depressing for broadcast on the majority of local radio stations in fear of further deaths. Anyhow, Gloomy Sunday the band aren't exactly the most depressing out there that I've heard, but their lyrical topics do range from medicinal depression treatments, the undead, to a rather un-pc usage of real 9/11 sound footage of the planes hitting the world trade centre, replete with screams, news reports and general hysteria that came with it as samples thoughout the opening track 'Living Dead at the Tradecentre Morgue'. So that'll go down well with a lot of people no doubt(!).

Musically, Gloomy Sunday are a really sludgy combination of Electric Wizard, Raging Speedhorn, early Crowbar and Eyehategod with flourishes of Sabbathian riffage here and there. The guitars are saturated in distortion, with a huge presence of fuzzy bass crackling amongst the wails of feedback and warm, buzzing guitars. However, the letdown on this album is the vocals for me. The guy sounds like the vocalist of one of those awful sub-core bands such as The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge and the like, flattening the music into blandness with his dull one-dimensional yaps and wails at the forefront of it all. I'm sure there are some great songs on here, but it's hard to give them the time they probably deserve to sink in when you really can't get your head around the vocals which are nestled in between just about every riff on the album. So, therefore, this album is wedged firmly into the 'try before you buy' section. An OK album that due to one major factor, could've been a lot better in my opinion.

Author: Lars Christiansen

Review
Tartarean Desire
5.5/10

Sometimes vocals are a tough issue on a doomesque metal album. Depending on the substyle performed, we have many options. Ozzy bashers are often hateful and disposable. Count Raven vocals, for example, are quite laughable. Funeral doomsters will embrace quickly the deep growls, that create an oppressive atmosphere and act like a background/support to the music despite they can´t offer a great range of emotions certainly... then we´ve got whispers and sweet pseudo-gothic croonery vocal work... well, all this rant is aimed to point out the incredibly monotonous vocals Gloomy Sunday have most of the time. They don´t belong to the mentioned types; the very first song features verses sung by a drunken pimp fired from the last pub closing, these broken words pumped off the worst of livers on Earth could suggest an interesting option to choose when delivering the goods in the vocal side. The rest of the songs are not sung with that peculiar voice. Nevertheless, when the album keeps flowing, the annoying sentiment is really hard to avoid and it makes the overall result decrease. The singer´s efforts partially spoil the impressions left by “Beyond Good And Evil” on me. Not an awful work, really, but it leans the music to dull territories, despite the rest of the instruments themselves are not innovative nor varied at all; it´s easy to hear the same drum fills and breaks in various songs, the riffs are more or less built on the same sonic textures everytime. And then we hear those creeping, boring vocals that strengthen the “correct but not amazing at all” feeling. Musically speaking Gloomy Sunday step on doomy territories halfway between sludgy moors and classic doom patterns. Electric Wizard could be a useful reference for the lost soul. Here we have a respectable dose of crunchy guitar riffs creating an effective (and boring) ambient without being fresh nor groundbreaking whatsoever.

Author: Fjordi