Shroud of Despondency (U.S.)

Shroud of Despondency (U.S.): Pine

About 58 minutes of black metal prog doom post black metal folk. Shroud of Despondency is trippy and no category limits the prog doom black folk depressive aggressive space rock nature of the music. Shroud of Despondency makes Opeth look like a bunch of narrow-minded uptight people… and make Motorhead and Slayer appear as unimaginative, one-way, assembly-line totalitarian bureaucratic absolutism of robotic production of carbon copy unmusic. “Light Words, Dark Graves” (4:31) is raw black metal for 3 minutes and 20 seconds, then the last minute is a spoken word with a piano piece that ends with a cartoonish voice. What? What’s the deal with this spoken-word bit? “The Great Sadness Descends” (5:27) is the definition of doom. It is slow and craws at the speed of a turtle. The band rides out the main melody for a long time. You would have never known that you can play the same melody for this long and make it work. This band just did it. “Half Open Gates” (8:58) is a good example of the different things the band does. This track is, to a large degree, an obvious case of black metal. Yet, it would be incorrect to see it that way because the folky, melodic elements create a doom atmosphere that takes over the song, so that between beginning and end something takes place and it takes about nine minutes to achieve the transition. Hence the song! “Nameless End” (5:15) starts off as a slow cave-recorded black metal that speeds up by 1:45 and continues as an intense, raw song until 4:00, when it slows down and just jams. “Wanderlust (Lightning Precedes Fire)” (2:27) is a keyboard, space music piece, that has the last 45 seconds of coughing and growling. What just happened here? Does someone need medication? That cough sounds awful. Call 911. “The Unchaining of an Animal” (6:27) begins with acoustic guitar and folky singing, like stereotypical hippies singing in the woods…wow, and they actually kept the whole song this way until the end. I was expecting them to bust out with some dogs barking or sounds of vomiting. But no. Just folk. Voilá, y’all!! Perfect music to play for the good times in life, to party and live it up…in the insane asylum. Shroud of Despondency is loco in the coco in Wisconsin. www.facebook.com/shroudofdespondency www.myspace.com/shroudofdespondency