Oh dear, it looks like Profound Lore’s recent streak of excellence (Portal, The Angelic Process, Alcest, Amber Asylum, Cobalt, Atavist) has finally come to an end with the release of the second album from this UK based, ambient one man black metal project.

So this Andrew Curtiss-Brignell fellow has a quite a few demos and one obscure full length released on God Is Myth Records and is allegedly the UK equivalent to Malefic or Wrest but with a bit of neo-folk thrown in. If only it were that promising sounding, because as it stands Mourner is a dreary, yawn inducing journey into forgetful one man black metal that belongs wit the likes of Striborg and Fear of Eternity than the aforementioned luminaries of the genre.

Boasting the expected one man black metal production values and sense of depression and self loathing, Mourner is a disjointed a mish mash of wailing, groaning, scrawling doomy black metal (“Horrible Gnosis”, “Requiem for Shattered Timber”) mixed with the expected injections of forced eerie, ambient trauma (“Waves Engulf the Pier”) attempts at more experimental and organic folk/clean elements (“Constantine the Blind”, “Morgawr”) and even instrumental post rock type atmospheres (“The Sleep of Reason”, “I Reeled in Heaven”) and none are particularly convincing. Andrew-what kind of project is this exactly?-you can’t seem to decide.

Brignell seems to have some interesting lyrical ideas and is, if anything, ambitious as shown by the three part “Requiem for Shattered Timbers” ( i) Overture ii) Arc of Piss and iii) Ruined Shore”) but musically with Each listen gets progressively worse as you get exposed to the utter discombobulating myriad of influences and random ideas-it like throwing paint on a sonic palette and hoping someone sees the ‘art’.

Mr. Brignell can handle his instruments, and if he would just focus on one type of music (preferably the folk ambient stuff as his bursts of blackened temper are the least impressive element here), he might be capable of something far better than this utter mess. And you Profound Lore, I guess I can forgive you considering the rest of this year’s releases, but don’t let it happen again.

[Visit the band's website]

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