Mourning Lenore – Loosely Bounded Infinities

The Portuguese melodic-death/doom metal band, Mourning Lenore, released their first debut album in 2010 under the name “Loosely Bounded Infinities.” As much as the name of this release is obscure, it’s just as genuine and extremely atmospheric. The spirit of melancholy associated with doom is quite surrounding, along with the brutality of death metal in the vocals, it’s just another release that would make you wonder. It also speaks to you on an extremely personal level, such as when you feel like you’re not alone in what you’re feeling, as if they speak through their music, saying: “we’re here too and we feel your pain, we feel your frustration, we feel your helplessness, and keep listening because we’ll pull you through as well.” It represents all the agony, hatred, despair, frustration and oppression which is well sorted among the tracks.

However, Mourning Lenore did mix in some of the ancient methods of traditional doom into their music to give you the good old feel of simple, yet, extremely touching music from back in the 70’s-80’s. An example would be as heard in the solo of the bonus track named “Patterns of Emptiness” along with the mixing of the harsh death metal growls and the sly, agonized, spirit crushing clean vocals. This hold true for most songs with the exception being the extraordinary intro on “Reminiscence”.

The guitars had to be this heavy and the tuning of which they have used perfectly suits their name and the way they introduce their art. There’s balance in the brutality and agony in most of the songs, where it would definitely take you to a whole other world of despair within the sensation the music they produced gives you from the moment you press the play button until the album finishes off. The best part about it, to me, is that you could actually relate to such a genre whether you’re feeling good, bad, powerful, agonized, or even not feeling anything at all. They would give you a strong base of emotions to relate to, no matter where, or whenever you listen to this release.

I would rather if the lyrics, however, would have been a little stronger or perhaps more sophisticated to fit the whole scene, but all in all.. It’s a great release and it’s one of the better death/doom albums I’ve heard, a favorite of mine as well.