My Shameful
The Return To Nothing
6.1
Finland is a country that has far and away become a solid breeding ground for quality death/doom metal over recent years. What that also means is many aspiring bands within that country – as well as many other areas of the world – are following suit and plunging forth into this slower paced, crushingly woeful genre, making it more difficult to find good music, considering there are more bands to sift through. My Shameful are among those bands looking to etch their own name into the mountain of funeral paced death/doom, and the band has already made a little bit of noise up to this point with their first couple of albums. The Return to Nothing is the third full-length release by this quartet of Finns, and it sees the band become even more funeral paced than was prevalent on this album’s predecessor, …of Dust.
The riffing here is almost too fucking easy for me to comprehend. As a matter of fact I just get completely lost at times wondering where in the world they’re going with these songs, as each riff seems to be played for so many bars you’re almost begging them to switch things up, almost pleading for them to offer up just a little bit of zest to the tempo. Every song simply drones on and on, and while there are many cool riffs here and there throughout the entire album, there is absolutely nothing layered overtop that is enough to give the songs some flavor and demand my attention. Instead you have eerie and almost sinister sounding undertones that give these songs a very vindictive and malevolent vibe. The entire feel from front to back is one of evil in its most gloomy form, and the more gothic sounding melodies probably wouldn’t work here with these very dark sounding riffs anyhow. To be perfectly honest, I’d have to say that this is My Shameful’s way of trying to break away from that and be somewhat different by sacrificing melody for earth plowing girth.
With that said there are some songs that are quite enjoyable on this disc. Spacey opener “The Same Grey Light” offers a very tense but somber mood, while the album’s title track and “It Can’t Get Worse” dirge through ugly riffs that make me picture the most morose sights to be seen by the human eye. Other tracks like the torturous "No Dawn" and the disturbing "Days Grow Darker" have very underwhelming riffs, and I think it’s because of these simple three chord drones that I continually find myself humming melodic passages over them, and that’s not a good sign for any band when the listener is subconsciously finishing the work they should have taken care of themselves in the first place. The production is certainly above average, if not a little on the thumpy side in the bass department, while the guitars contain a super punchy chunk to them that just breathes heaviness. The death vocals are more of a gurgle than your typical Finnish low end roar, and tossed in are some very strange sounding clean vocals and spoken word. Overall there are some solid riffs to be heard on this bitch, and if you’re a fan of this group’s earlier work then you’ll probably enjoy this. Other fans of funeral paced death/doom will find too many other albums released this year along these lines (Ahab anyone?) to even bother.
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4/14/2008