Tomorrow’s Rain was formed in Tel-Aviv, Israel in 2011. However their debut album Hollow was released only in 2020, in the peak of COVID. This prevented to gain a proper recognition but it really gained some attention with the music and impressive guest musicians’ list: members of such bands like My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Draconian, Rotting Christ, Arch Enemy and Septic Flesh can be heard on this album. Four years later Tomorrow’s Rain release their sophomore album named Ovdan (“loss” in Hebrew.)
The guest list on this album is not less impressive than on the previous one: we have here members of Dark Funeral, Mayhem, Merciful Fate and many more. Also the events in life of vocalist Yishai Sweartz had a huge impact on music: in 2023 he was diagnosed with a severe heart attack. The heart catheterization has failed and Yishai went through an open heart surgery lasted almost 8 hours to save his life and spent 3 weeks in intensive care.
When it comes to a genre definition, Tomorrow’s Rain often labeled as doom/gothic band but it can hardly describe the band’s music for 100%, at least in Ovdan. The heaviness and sorrow is placed here along with wistful condemnation, while catchy gothic metal riffs are changed with major key instrumental that brings some hope. In fact, those moods mostly set by Alex Karlinsky’s keyboards: it can’t be said that his instrument is the dominating one here but he can conjure up the specific mood even with some little touches and that’s a real mastery. Great work indeed.
The opening “Roads” with Andreas Vingback of Dark Funeral and Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus starts as a slow paced and melancholic piece: guitars, brooding keyboards and clean low vocals. Later music becomes heavier, distorted guitars bring some dreariness and a tragedy comes with vocal changing. However, the highlight here is saxophone; it reminds me Ukrainian band White Ward and a little bit of Amorphis album Queen Of Time. The next song “Sunrise” immerses the listener fully into the atmosphere of despair and endless grief: emotional extreme vocal with heavy riffs and some keyboards slightly remind My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost, obviously. At the same time “Muaka”, where Attila Csihar from Mayhem can be heard, causes some mixed feelings: started with slow paced guitar picking, the music changes rapidly, adding grim vocals, double pedals and pummeling bass, and when a melodic guitar comes, it sounds like an endless tragedy. However, the song ends with some atmospheric keyboards with almost major note. I dimply imagined how will Attila’s vocal fit the song but it sounds really good and the only thing that bothered me is some sharp changes in the music.
“I Skuggornas Grav”, which almost bisects Ovdan is a really outstanding piece, which is closer to Leonard Cohen than to any doom or gothic band. It’s just slow paced and pretty simple music (technically), where Yishai together with Mickael Broberg of Unanimated and Anja Huwe of Xmal Deutschland sing or even tell the story. It’s deep, it’s impressive and it’s beautiful. In its turn, “Turn Around” with Michael Denner from Merciful Fate/King Diamond is a catchy gothic metal number with heavy verse, melodic chorus and stunning solo. It will be hard to get it out of the head, I’m sure. Buy the way, there is also a gothic rock version of this song which is good as well.
“Room 124” is a typical doom/death: slow pace and pummeling riffs. “Convalescence” starts in the same way, increase the tempo and some moment and slowing back again. And “Burning Times” with the vocals of Jan Lubitzki from Depressive Age is quite smooth song with lots of keyboards; clean vocals change with extreme ones and back, the same happens with guitars but the one who really shines here is the drummer Nir Nakav – his work here is excellent.
Surprisingly light instrumental named “Rainbow” is closing the album. Played in major key, it was made, I believe, to get the listener back from the void of sorrow and despair, where Ovdan threw him before and maybe give some hope. The last one “Intensive C. U.” is an autobiographical poem from Yishai about his feelings and fears during his stay in hospital.
“…I believe we have to bring something fresh to the table with every album as I see ourselves as artists and not as entertainers” says Yishai, and here I personally have a little issue with this album because Ovdan, is too miscellaneous record. It is very interesting, a lot of things happen there but there is a lack of cohesion here. It’s like the band had a lot of what to say (I suspect that’s exactly what happened) and wanted to impress the listener with diversity of the music. It’s not critical but it catches the eye and I think the next album maybe will a little bit smoother without losing its vividness.
Ovdan was released on April, 19th via AOP Records.
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