Album Review: Aeonian Sorrow - Katara
Reviewed by Richard Oliver
Formed from musicians based in both Finland and Greece, Aeonian Sorrow have been unleashing a wave of misery, anguish and despair since their formation in 2015. This continues with the band’s second album “Katara” which is named and influenced by the Katara pass in the Pindus mountains of northern Greece which as well as containing some very dangerous roads is also according to legend cursed. Those scary Katara roads were travelled by frontwoman Gogo Melone when visiting her grandparents and the album is dedicated to their memory.
There have been a couple of line up changes in the band since their latest release - the 2020 E.P. “A Life Without” with Joel Notkonen joining on harsh vocals and Achilleas Papagrigoriou on the drums. Musically “Katara” picks up where the band left off with their melancholic mix of death doom metal, funeral doom metal and gothic metal. Every song exudes passion, emotion but touches upon frailty, sorrow and mourning.
Songs such as ‘Elumia’ and the title track really push forth these themes and emotions in bleak and forlorn style with the impassioned clean vocals from Gogo working well against the fierce gutturals from Joel. The crushing doom-laden guitar riffs are equally offset against atmospheric keys which switch between a simple piano sound to ethereal orchestration used to great effect in the really dark and bleak songs such as ‘Her Torment’ and ‘Forbidden Cry’.
The death doom scene especially in Europe is a crowded market and even though this is very much an underground scene there are a lot of bands performing this style. It is also a sound that doesn’t have much variation meaning that a lot of the bands sound very similar to each other but it is the songwriting that really counts here as well as the performances and Aeonian Sorrow have both down to a fine art. “Katara” continues the high quality music that Aeonian Sorrow have put out to date. If bands such as Swallow The Sun and Draconian are your thing then this album is 100% worth your time.
