Mournful Congregation
The June Frost

Many times it happens that even with an incredible run-up and a great desire to succeed in jumping, you miss the foot support and the jump doesn't go well, ending up crashing into the wall. Mournful Congregation had a great run-up coming from the album The monad of creation, an immense boulder of funeral doom metal, but they too probably made a mistake in the act of jumping. A morbid, seminal, at times insurmountable album that carried a musical drama rarely heard in music. Four years after that masterpiece, the three Australians led by singer Damon Good returned to the studio to record the third work of their career: 2009 was therefore the release year of "The June Frost", with a minimalistic cover somehow reflecting the music contained in the CD.

After listening to this full-length, I immediately (perhaps mistakenly) compared it to the previous album. The guidelines of the band's sound have remained the same: grandiloquence of the compositions, guitars with an extremely slow rhythm, growl vocals that seem to gurgle from hell, perpetually dark and dramatic atmospheres. The problem I found, however, is the lack of inventiveness of this album, quite static compared to The monad of creation. Another choice that raised quite a few doubts for me was placing as many as 4 instrumental episodes out of 8: the not so little declared goal was to lighten the listening of the album, given the length and difficulty of the remaining songs. The final result, however, seemed to me to be a fragmented work, with the instrumental pieces disrupting the homogeneity of the album: one above all the useless "The Februar Winds", with its two minutes of noises and sounds without head or tail.

One point remains to be clarified: "The June Frost", despite having these hiccups in my opinion, wins any comparison with albums of this genre released in the last two years (with few exceptions). Mournful Congregation indeed have the extraordinary ability to create compositions that transcend the music itself and become true stories among human sufferings and fears. "White Cold Wrath Burnt Frozen Blood" is a sound trip of remarkable length within the human psyche: a journey made of ancestral guitars, a voice dragged to the extreme, and fleeting moments of apparent calm. Conversely, "Descent Of The Flames" is a continuous dialogue between Good's voice and Justin Hartwig's guitar. All more or less level compositions that are sublimated by the title track (one of those instrumental episodes) that in four minutes summarizes through the guitar's laments the musical and compositional creed that underlies the concept "music" for Mournful Congregation. An extraordinary song for the dramatic pathos it carries with it and absolutely sad, evocative, and heartfelt. Truly a small great jewel.

At the end of this suffocating journey, there remains the regret for an album that, given the great ability of the band, could have certainly given something more. The June Frost still contains flashes of truly excellent songwriting that confirms the three Australians as one of the best bands in this extreme realm, still unknown to most. Rating 3 and a half.

1. "Solemn Strikes The Funeral Chime" (3:53)
2. "White Cold Wrath Burnt Frozen Blood" (17:02)
3. "Descent Of The Flames" (9:01)
4. "The June Frost" (4:24)
5. "A Slow March To The Burial" (6:49)
6. "The Februar Winds" (2:53)
7. "Suicide Choir" (12:48)
8. "The Wreath" (3:16)