Mournful Grace
A Season Of Eternal Sadness (Demo) 2004 None
This is a surprisingly well-crafted demo. Mournful Grace play a kind of death/doom that reminds very much of early Paradise Lost and the Anathema demos. Opener 'Despise, In the Name of Hate' literally blows you away with brutal blastbeats, hateful grunts and outstanding guitar work. The rest of the material is of the same high quality, consisting of early death/doom with the familiar characteristics: mournful guitar harmonies that suddenly switch into brutal death metal assaults, heroic guitar solos and a voice of hate underlying the whole. Once in a while a clean voice appears and there lies the main weakness of this demo. The clean vocals are terribly out of place and tune and the fact that the vocalist has a lisp when he sings clean, doesn't help their cause. And while the distorted guitar work is simply brilliant, some clean guitar parts here and there sound a bit clumsy. Despite all this, there is huge potential here. The band has good songwriting skills, know how to keep their tracks interesting all the way (which can’t be said of most contemporaneous doom bands) and their lack of originality is completely irrelevant, as they prove that they have the skills to pull off this nowadays forgotten style of death/doom. Add to all this the excellent sound quality and rambling guitar sound that puts many 'professional' bands to shame, and you know that we are talking here about a big promise for the future. The band can be contacted via their website at www.mournfulgrace.135.it	1. Despise, in the name of hate 2. Thorns 3. An eternal season of sadness Approx. 20 minutes
Reviewed by: Kostas Panagiotou
Mournful Grace / Historiae (7") 2006 None
After their promising demo, this is the second work of Mournful Grace that falls into my hands, and I’m very glad to hear that the band has made 100% progress since their latest release. The solid guitar work that underpins their track on this split reminds once again of the old school doom death sound of the Peaceville three, although bands like Indesinence and Imindain also come to mind occasionally. While the grunted vocals remain as powerful and convincing as ever, the biggest progress compared to their previous work lays mostly in the improved clean voice, that is now much better integrated to the whole in the form of chanted vocals. Furthermore, the atmospheric elements are also better thought off compared to their previous demo, adding a very welcome element of Italian darkness and weird psychedelia at times. Historiae is an entirely different matter, as the blackened guitar tones suggest as soon as you turn over the vinyl. This is a band clearly more influenced by the depressive black metal school of bands like Shining or Xasthur. The sound is generally dark and miserable, except of the coda at the end of the song which ends the track in a melodic, almost uplifting note. The much-needed variety between the two tracks makes this very limited split highly enjoyable if you are into the bands/genres mentioned above.	Mournful Grace: 1.La nobilita de fallimento Historiae: 2.de Karmica meditatione Approx. 16 minutes
Reviewed by: Kostas Panagiotou