"The Foam of Despair" Boils Forth from Mourning Dawn's Gloomy Font (Early Album Stream)
Emotion is central to music, but the interplay of emotion is especially pivotal. The ability to string together chords to describe the mutation of bittersweet joy to ashen despair and other such heart-wrenching twists is central to making music powerful, a lesson Mourning Dawn has learned well in their two decades of operation. The band's latest album The Foam of Despair, which releases this Friday, demonstrates their exacting skill in exerting control over emotion through musical means. Though The Foam of Despair operates primarily on the principles of black and doom metal, capturing the desired superposition ("the thin line defining hope and despair," as Mourning Dawn founder Laurent explains below) involves some unexpected forms as well. Stream the whole album here ahead of its release:
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Across the record, dark, contemplative melodies emerge to be counterbalanced by aggressive riffs-- like barbed-wire twisting through a fog to draw blood, there's a painful urgency to the contrast. Elsewhere, however, industrial textures and trap beats offer up a totally different dissonance: soft-edged and flawed humanity giving way to more calculating, concrete instincts, perhaps. Whatever the exact reasonings, the shifts and surprises that define the album's structure make it incredibly engaging as a whole -- it's not an album to skip through.
Founder and guitarist/vocalist Laurent comments:
After the nightmare that was ‘Dead End Euphoria’, it was time to ask myself where Mourning Dawn was. Lost, somewhere between the utter void of depression and the vivid light of life. And this is what ‘The Foam of Despair’ is all about: living on the thin line defining hope and despair. The album has to be read as a whole, like a retrospective of what I've been through during all the past years, with intensity and honesty. All the influences that ‘ve crossed during the years, black metal, doom metal, industrial, even jazz... It doesn’t matter anymore: it’s all about the intention. It’s about what we are, the ghosts of the braves, concealed in blue pain. Enjoy.
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The Foam of Despair releases January 12th via Aesthetic Death.
