Warning: I’m about to bare my soul to you assholes, so stop snickering at the back…For a supposedly stone cold, Law Enforcement, metal head kind of dude I’m oddly emotional. Show me pictures of dead babies, crime scenes or autopsies, and I’m not in the least bit bothered. However, anything related to my 6-year old daughter or if Disney kills an animated furry creature on screen, I’ll bawl. Also, music tends to tug on my heart strings; a certain riff, solo or chord progression will get me right in the ticker.

So have does the above apply to the fourth full length album from these Norwegian doomsters (featuring members of country mates Fallen)? Honestly? I need a box of fucking Kleenex every time I listen to it.

From These Wounds is absolutely laden with utterly gut wrenchingly melancholic art. Each of the 8 tracks (the Candlelight version has a bonus track), has some sort of soul rending, lip biting, eye filling moment that just collapses your masculinity. Partially, the sheer sadness that drips from every track is achieved by vocalist/ bassist Frode Forsmo. His voice is a layered, hypnotic chant, similar to Paul Kuhr’s (November’s Doom) clean stuff. No growls, no forced singing. Just despondent, draining baritone chants.

Starting with the angelic choirs of “This Barren Skin”, the music is 8 lengthy tracks of sheer, depressive brilliance, and I mean truly, knee wilting, will crushing funeral doom of the finest order. The tracks cover the range of huge, rumbling riffage and more delicate, ethereal moments of morose clarity. The highlights are too often to name; but succinctly, the 5:30 moment from “This Barren Skin”, stern cello backed lope of the title track, the completely rending (and for me, tear inducing) chorus of standout “The Architecture of Loss”, somber orchestration of “Red Moon”, the almost uplifting but hefty “Vagrant God”, and the totally wilting “Pendulum” (the album’s other standout) and it’s amazing vocal climax. Admittedly, by the time the last two tracks, “Saturn” and the bonus “Breathing Through You” roll by nearly an hour later, I’ve often cried myself to sleep, sucking my thumb, but both are quality tracks.

A I’ve heard a lot of great funeral doom albums the last few years, from My Dying Bride, Draconian, Pantheist and Mourning Beloveth, to even the mighty Finns such as Swallow the Sun, Shape of Despair, Ablaze In Hatred and such, but From These Wounds is arguably the most truly tangibly emotional and sonically depressing example of the genre of the last 10 years.

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