Shape Of Despair
Shades Of...

Three years after their formation and with some member changes, Raven changed their name to Shape Of Despair and decided to get serious by preparing "Shades Of..." over two years. It was the band's first album and also the first to smear melody with a clear inclination towards funeral doom metal.

Five tracks of necessary length, but of frightening depth. If I started talking about the line-up, this review would turn into a book: it's a project involving musicians from the best bands of the Finnish extreme scene (Finntroll, Impaled Nazarene, Ajattara, The Mist and the Morning Dew...).

This is not a normal album. It's music that, although it leaves almost no room for any other instrumental interludes, doesn't hit for its mass but for its penetrating power. It's like a very thick fog that prevents you from seeing but if you try to touch it, doesn't seem as consistent as it appears. Yet the sensation of isolation, sadness, and cold spreads throughout the body, numbing it from the inside like euthanasia.
The guitars, distant yet never absent, provide a massive and enveloping background, but again, only in appearance. The drums experiment with extremely fast tempos for the genre (after all, it's funeral doom, where there is usually an overuse not only of whole notes and half notes but also of something even longer). The voice, cavernous and very deep, is never the protagonist, but accompanies together with everything else. The female voice is limited to vocalizations and is shamelessly used as a musical instrument, always delicate and close to the deliberately prominent instrument: the flute. Through this choice, Shape Of Despair distances themselves greatly from any conventions and customize a genre often considered boring, making the 14 minutes of the first track anything but long. And this is the band's surprising and innovative characteristic. "In The Mist" not only isn't boring, but it also presents a perfect expressiveness for the lyrics. There are no solos or demonstrations of technical skill because the emotional choice is decidedly more pertinent. There’s no laughing, boasting, or need to prove anything to anyone. They play to express themselves.

And along these lines, "Woundheir" offers continuous intertwining of guitar laid on never intrusive keyboards. The surprise at the third track is the inability to feel boredom or disgust for a unique and partially changed narrative thread compared to the beginning: "Down Into The Stream" is no different from the others and yet continues to transport slowly (but never lazily) through misty and damp nights, and the sense of isolation increases, not without recreating landscapes of forests and nature. "Shadowed Dreams" is the "least long" track, as "shorter" does not fit the 8 minutes and 20 seconds it counts. The tempos are faster compared to the others, but never exaggerated. The repetition breaks sporadically, and the sensation of hypnosis accelerates the listening once again, leading us to "Sylvan-night", the final piece that perfectly closes a perfect work. Endless and slow, it accompanies with the prolixity of the sweetness of its lyrics. The charm of the lyrics is indeed perfectly recited and inserted into the musical weavings that already seem to speak for themselves, without words...

And although it was obvious from the start, the night has only just arrived now.