Review Summary: Try not to cry...
I don't know what it is about Finland, but they continue to pump out some of the best metal music known to man. Marianas Rest is a band that has, until recently, flown under the radar for me. Finnish bands, whether death metal, black metal or doom, have specialized in making their brand of music sound as desolate and melancholic as possible. That is no different for Marianas Rest, who play some of the gloomiest death doom that I've ever heard while mixing in a whole lot of romanticized gothic influences as well.
The Bereaved is their newest album and, if you couldn't tell by the title, is a sad sounding album that brings forth all kinds of emotions for the listener.
‘Thank You for the Dance’ kicks the album off with some haunting, church-like chanting, breaking into some sorrowful crooning before erupting into a massive wall of melodic riffage and heavily emotional gutturals that sound like Jaakko is pouring his entire soul out. The next track, ‘Rat in the Wall’, brings forth an 80s gothic rock vibe for the first minute that wouldn't sound out of place on one of The Cure's albums. The mix of harsh and clean vocals are perfectly balanced and perfectly conveys the sadness that this album truly brings forth. You can feel the melancholy dripping from each and every second of
The Bereaved and that's what drew me into this band in the first place. Like I mentioned, no other country can come close to Finland in terms of bleak, dark metal.
‘Divided’ is one of the “faster” tracks on the album while still maintaining that desolate atmosphere. To me, the mix of doom with melodic death metal can be extremely magical if done correctly and Marianas Rest do it better than most. This track has some black metal-esque shrieked vocals behind some super catchy riffs and frigid sounding keys before transitioning into a folky acoustic section. After this, ‘Again Into the Night’ bursts through the door with vibes that make you feel as if you're swimming in a freezing cold lake in the pitch black of night and some more fantastic keyboard work.
The entire album follows this trend of trading off between harshness and more clean sections that compliment each other to perfection. Production is such an important aspect of metal in this vein and it is absolutely spot-on here. The riffs don't drown out the vocals and the vocals don't drown out the keyboards and vice versa. Everything here sounds like pure, raw emotion and yet the rawness isn't a detriment in the way it is with some other genres, specifically black metal.
The Bereaved has extremely clear production while still giving you a certain edge that only the Finnish can truly master.
If you're not familiar with Marianas Rest, this album would be a perfect starting point for all of the reasons that I mentioned. It's emotional, it's heavy, it has plenty of melody and the vocals are absolutely sublime. Melodic death metal is a genre that can be quite stagnant, but these guys never let that happen. The death doom elements bring about a darkness that most bands in the melodeath genre just can't compete with and these two genres really go together perfectly. Fans of these genres should find plenty to love about
The Bereaved, just try not to cry your eyes out while you're jamming.
