the sounds of perseverance: Sorrows Path (Greece)

Sorrows Path (Greece): “The Rough Path of Nihilism” (Rock It Up Records)

How’s this for a happy band name and even bleaker album title? Happy days are not here again, Jack! Sorrows Path presents an interesting dilemma for the minds that like to categorize metal music: Sorrows Path is way too progressive for doom and certainly too despondent for prog metal. How about if we split the difference: prog doom metal? Sorrows Path sounds a little bit like Messiah Marcolin singing for Dream Theater. Not quite, you know, but it’s that sort of combination that might appear odd at first, but quickly works once you hear it.

The story of Sorrows Path is an earful and should be interesting to anyone having a hard time forming/keeping a metal band. The band formed in 1993, but this is actually their first full-length album, and it comes after some demos in the 1990s, the death a founder of the band, mandatory military service, near-dear accidents, and a series of “normal” band problems, like lineup changes.

So, their debut is released about 20 years after the band is formed. And you thought that you were having difficulties in your musical endeavors?

The album itself is brainiac, intellectual metal music for the thinking person. It is melodic, but Sorrows Path does not pander to the audience by making songs that sound like other popular songs that you have heard a million times before. The singing is melodic and melancholic at the same time, with a certain sadness inherent in the tone. There’s a bit of symphonic edge to the music, and the guitars have a tendency to sound proggy, but it’s very balanced, enhancing the doom. Nice solo work, too.

Sorrows Path: prog and doom, and perseverance, indeed.

www.sorrowspath.net