Continually overlooked in the doom scene yet consistently brilliant and evolving, Ireland’s Mourning Beloveth, have yet again improved from album to album. This time, the band has improved on the brilliant A Murderous Circus by adding even more classic doom flair to their already draining funeral doom lope.

As with A Murderous Circus, Mourning Beloveth ply a depressive, cavernous form of evocative and depressive doom metal with some clean textures thrown in courtesy of Frank Brennan’s clean croons, but now the band seems to have discovered a Solstice (UK) styled sense of vast epics and grandeur to the whole morose affair, especially in the guitar and solo work of Brennan and Brian Delaney. The base nature of the sound is still rooted in Darren Moor’s pained growls and the lengthy, rumbling yet layered textures of the mournful riffs and solemn harmonies that are firmly rooted in their expected British peers (Anathema, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride), but there’s some delicate, classical lines running under all of it, way more so than A Murderous Circus which had clean elements, but they seemed more funeral doom clean.

Gasping opener “The Sickness” has some strains of it from the pure classic doom chorus (3:10) but its draining mid song riff is pure lumbering melancholy. Second track “Trace Decay” has some stunning vocal interplay between Brennan and Moor before the pure Solstice strains dance around the tracks mid and later stages with some gorgeous solo work and kickass vocal climax. “Primeval Rush” delivers a stern yet rending MDB meets Finish styled lope and roar with a momentum gathering riff at the 7:50 mark until the end of the song that’s just to die for and sure to be one of the most memorable doom moments of 2008. “The Burning Man” could be termed as the album’s weak link as nowhere in its 10 minute duration do I get the chills of the previous tracks, though a more energetic closing gives it some positivity.

Lumbering closer “Poison Beyond All” is clean vocal free and has a stunning mid song chord progression that’s pure doom bliss, despite lack of a real peak but it serves to put an end point on a phenomenal album that shows that Mourning Beloveth are arguably one of funeral doom’s very best acts.

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