Whispering Gallery
Shades Of Sorrow

Lately, I've been rediscovering many great bands in the doom metal scene, many of which are underrated or even completely anonymous among the Italian audience. Perhaps because the genre has become tiresome (not to me, that's clear!), perhaps because there's not enough word of mouth, but the fact is that many bands are born, develop, and dissolve without leaving much trace behind them. Today, I want to give due credit to a Dutch band, Whispering Gallery, and their album "Shades Of Sorrow", in my opinion, their definitive achievement of artistic maturity (as well as their musical peak).

This is a somewhat unusual combo, six members of whom as many as three are vocalists, alternating between growl, scream, and clean, sometimes theatrical voice in their songs. Surrounding this is a sound cathedral that's definitely interesting and at times moving, very original in tackling a now rather saturated sector. Basically, as stated, doom, but also some outbursts of death metal and arrangements (mainly keyboard) bordering on progressive (at certain moments, IQ and Porcupine Tree came to mind!).

The album in question isn't very long (about fifty minutes, divided into eight tracks), but it contains some truly remarkable pieces.

The beginning was love at first listen for me. "The Ghost Inside" proceeds slowly and painfully (as doom tradition teaches), with a moaning guitar and a very heavy drum on which first a deep growl is cast, then a very powerful and emotional clean voice, which in some moments, though not in this track, reaches even power metal intensity. A rather calm and atmospheric melodic break, skillfully guided by an electric guitar and languid keyboard touches, is followed again by a cavernous growl, occasionally entwining with the clean singing sealing an exceptional union, whose pathos is reached with the addition of a scream in a verse. Two-thirds into the track, there's a moment where doom fans will feel the strong influence of early My Dying Bride: very slow drums, like a heartbeat, pulsating and dirty bass, and a violin that occasionally cuts through the gloom accumulated up to that point. The song closes with the fine chorus first sung in clean, then in growl, a certainly fascinating and engaging ending for one of the strong pieces of the album.

Another standout track is the subsequent "Afraid To Surrender", with an opening verse of medieval and ancestral flavor, alternating with powerful and angry growl verses, closed by a melancholic violin that ferries the listener directly to the poetic chorus, again sung both in growl and clean. The central part is the best-executed of the whole track, certainly the most mature and creative, guided by a masterful use of keyboards and a rhythm section here allowing a booming and rocky parenthesis.

The third track "Darkness Falls" is also good, with again excellent keyboard work (here in its atmospheric-progressive guise, just listen to the verse around the fourth minute) and a chorus among the most moving heard so far on the album, the tail-end of which is entrusted to a romantic guitar solo. Without taking anything away from the title track and the wild "Desperation", it's the subsequent "From The Grave" and "Beyond The Light" that complete the quintet of the most deserving tracks on the album.

The clear voice plays the leading role in the first of the two, excelled here in reaching extremely high peaks of intensity as well as in delighting in recited verses while the song unfolds in a less typical doom pattern, more atmospheric and misty. "Beyond The Light" is instead dominated by dreamy and spacey keyboards, aptly illustrating the sense of the title, imparting a dramatic and mysterious aura to the track. Occasionally the effects are a bit redundant, but generally, the entire piece goes beyond a seven as a hypothetical rating.

Whispering Gallery is certainly courageous, skilled at playing with sounds, voices, and melodies, experimenting within a rather canonical genre. The album isn't devoid of flaws: sometimes the growl and the rhythmic part seem a bit poorly recorded, as well as there are times when one perceives a certain heaviness and underlying mannerism (as already mentioned for "Beyond The Light"). However, these are small things that don't take away from a truly great album, one that will delight doom lovers because it's innovative and unique, and especially because in many cases it's emotionally intense and moving like only the sacred monsters of the genre have managed to be so far.