SORROW: Death Of Sorrow
Release year: 2023
Label: Xtreem Music
Sorrow who, I hear you ask. That’s a fair question – there are a number of acts named Sorrow we could cover over here, from Death In June collaborator Rose McDowall’s act to the obscure death/doom act from New York, USA. And as it happens, it’s the latter Sorrow we’re talking about today.
If you’ve never heard of the New York act, I don’t blame ya. They were only together for a few years in the early 90’s, releasing one album in 1992 before disappearing. This time what was dead lay dead for three decades – Sorrow reformed in 2022. And now this, their sophomore album, apparently written 30 years ago but recorded now. The question begs to be asked: does the new-old Sorrow have something to offer to the extreme metal scene of the 2020’s?
The album kicks off reasonably well with Doom The World. The track sounds a bit like a slightly groovier Winter – slow, lurching, heavy, with a bit of that Hellhammer/Celtic Frost beat to it. One cannot help but notice the sound almost instantly, though. The guitars don’t pack much of a punch, which severely reduces the intended heaviness of the track.
Sadly, things go downhill from the first track. Actually, within the first track: after a promising start – albeit hampered by the sound – it just goes nowhere. The rest of the album follows suit, being a collection of generic slow and mid-paced old school death metal full off trivial riffs and uninteresting songs.
The major problem with Death Of Sorrow is indeed its facelessness. Even after several listens you’ll be hard pressed to recognize this track from that. They’re all the same boring gray mass. It all comes across as an uninspired mixture of Winter and Obituary, essentially lifting the least exciting elements from both.
This, combined with a sound that deflates the intended heaviness, results in an album that’s just about as uninteresting as they come. To be clear, Death Of Sorrow is not a bad album in the sense that it’d have crappy songs or incompetent musicianship or something like that. Neither of those apply; instead, Sorrow is sort of passable, but thoroughly uninteresting, on all of fronts.
All of this results in the kind of complete mediocrity that’s just not worth the time of day. I suppose die hard fans of the band will relish in this album and enjoy it. And no disrespect towards them. But for the rest of us, Death Of Sorrow just doesn’t deliver. I hate to be that guy, but based on this, Sorrow anno 2023 don’t have much to give the extreme metal scene. Maybe this album would have been more impressive 30 years and a gazillion death metal releases ago, but now… not so much.
Only Death Is Real 