Review: MORNE “To The Night Unknown”

MORNE To The Night Unknown
MORNE Records

These past few weeks have seen me taking in large doses of To The Night Unknown by Boston Doom band MORNE. I’ve missed this pleasure in the past (and they’ve been going at it since 2005) but I never thought I’d have it all in life. After a quick dive into their history and finding out this will be their fourth release, I was expecting something quite major. Let me tell you that through Armageddon Records MORNE will be delivering their own brand of bitter on September 7^th 2018 and you should prick up those ears and listen, really.

The first thing that is apparent, picked up in the first few minutes is that MORNE love 90’s British Doom Metal. I too, let’s go!

Twinges of MY DYING BRIDE are to be found woven throughout the melody in their tracks. “The Blood Is Our Own” has Paul Rajpal producing some awesome haunting guitar drones and he simply piles on the MORNE flavour. Their “Night Awaits The Dawn” track injects some SVARTIDAUDI type drone sounds into the mix and with the SOLITUDE AETERNUS guitar style leads I’m nodding my head in accordance with every beat. This whole album is a workout in slow, Sludgy Doom, from the way the feedback is used as instrumentation to the abrasive but longing vocal style of Milosz Gassan.

I’m pretty sure the whole concept of MORNE is to be built out of solid, simplistic and repetitive riffs that stand up to any weather. Like an open cenotaph in the rain, just waiting for its next name to be added into eternity. For drummer Billy Knockenhauer this cannot have been a complicated affair but he is without doubt the backbone in this type of music along with bassist Morgan Coe. No band can be heavy unless they perfect the low register and both of these musicians offer up the real deal. Heavy, well thought out grooves which in fact lead me to believe that MORNE have perfected their sound with the help of Audioseige and they’ve found what they’ve always strived for – you need to check this stuff out, the mix is doing them proud. No peaks and troughs in the music, no hills or valleys to lead us on a musical journey – this is a heavy slab of bleak and purposeful Doom Metal.

The album artwork by Hillarie Jason fits the tracks really well and keeps in with images I conjure up from the Doom Metal scene. Saturation bleed, sucking any real beauty out forever…

Find it on Bandcamp for a pre order which I heartily recommend to any Doom fan.