Review MORNE ‘Engraved With Pain’

Morne from Boston, Massachusetts deliver a very interesting album. It’s not exactly easy going music, but rather metallic intensity somewhere on the spectrum of doom metal, post-metal and sludge.

Morne started in 2005 and have released four longplayers to date. With ‘Engraved With Pain’, the fifth album is now in the record stores and the album is a real stunner. With just four tracks, Morne’s tracklist remains straightforward. However, if you look at the playing time of each song, there is only one track, ‘Wretched Empire’ (7:45 minutes), which does not exceed the ten-minute mark.

It starts with the title track. Samples of wind and harsh nature waft out of the speakers before the first delicate guitar sounds herald the coming evil.

‘Engraved With Pain’ is pervaded by a dystopian mood in which constantly repeating basic patterns create a platform that reflects the overall heaviness of the music. You can feel the pain described in the title, and the hypnotic structures put the listener into a trance.

Photo: Hillarie Jason

The songs roll towards you with incessant force and it is the mixture of anger and despair that characterizes the vocals of frontman Milosz Gassan.

Let’s come back to the aforementioned ‘Wretched Empire’. Not only is it the most compact song on this album, but it is also interesting to look at the lyrics. It is noticeable that the song is not a happy one. Rather, it is about the state of our society, which has allowed itself to be led astray and is more divided than ever before. Yet history didn’t happen that long ago and it seems as if humanity has learned nothing and it is these four songs that guide you through the decline of humanity.

‘Engraved With Pain’ is an intense and emotionally driven album. Despair, anger and melancholy intertwine and at the same time act as driving forces for change. This album demands the listener’s attention and cannot simply be listened to on the fly. But when giving the album time to unfold it reveals a power that impresses.