Review Summary: One of the finest metal albums of the year
I’d never heard Urne’s music before, but
A Feast On Sorrow swept me off my feet immediately, kinda like the unstoppable wave depicted on that grayscale album cover. While this album is metal as f*ck, it’s one of those records which may prove hard for the genre police to pin down in one bucket or another, as prog metal, sludge, groove, and post-metal all play important roles in the proceedings. In reality, the key thing to take away from
A Feast On Sorrow is that it never loses the plot, always moves forward inexorably, and is possessed by a spirit both gritty and fun.
There’s a sense of visceral energy throughout this album. Opener “The Flood Came Rushing In” begins with a howling roar and a frantic musical backdrop, a fitting beginning, even if it’s a bit more “extreme” in sound than most of the album. More generally, the songs here thrive on mostly speedy tempos, immensely enjoyable solos, and a tremendous sense of groove, all coexisting with heavy riffs and sludge-leaning harsh vox. The balance of the tracklist is key to the record’s success, as relatively concise bangers like the fast-paced “The Burden” or the absolute ripper of a title track measure against sprawling epics like the “A Stumble of Words” or the grandiose closer “The Long Goodbye/Where do the Memories Go?”.
It’s the overarching feeling of a multitude of diverse elements melded pretty darn seamlessly which makes
A Feast On Sorrow tick. At times, the band seems to lean in the direction of near-wankery, aligning the songs with the expectations of a prog or even power metal audience; at others, the delivery is more simple and visceral, in tune with the more brutal side of the group’s sound. Mastodon might be the obvious comparison, with the dual caveats that, first, the most relevant Mastodon album changes by the moment, and second, that, even if the two bands deal in a similar combination of sonic touchstones, this release doesn’t actually sound like Mastodon much at all. Comparisons be damned, the result here is a tasty treat which should impress a wide range of listeners across the metal-jamming spectrum.
A Feast On Sorrow will satiate your hunger for all things metal for a while.
