Band: Shroud of Bereavement Album: Alone Beside Her Label: Screaming Ferret Rating: 10/10 Website: http://www.shroud-of-bereavement.com BUY NOW!

"Alone Beside Her" was originally recorded as a demo in 2005. Band leader and head growler, Dan Robinson recorded it this way in an effort to gain label interest. Screaming Ferret Wreckords, home to classic thrash acts like Anvil and Nuclear Assault, took notice and two years later released the album. "Alone Beside Her" is a testament to Robinson's perseverance as an ever-maturing artist. After more than a decade of line-up changes and other hardships, he has finally released the band's masterpiece. Shroud's earlier efforts were fantastic displays of emotionally-laden, atmospheric doom metal, but each album was just a hair-length away from perfection. "Alone Beside Her" fills in the minor flaws of their previous efforts. The album maintains all the elements that made their prior albums spectacular: a bottom-heavy sound that vibrates your body and your environment, catchy doom metal riffing with a thick tone, angelic female choirs juxtaposed upon savage death growls, and sombre classical instrumentation. Where this album improves upon the ones before is in the sound department. Previously, the band's production came across a bit mucky, especially on "Of Ages...", which created a raw sound and did not allow the listen to fully experience the majesty of the band's music. Possibly the two year wait allowed the band ample time to adjust and modify its sound to perfection. Besides a few minor adjustments in sound quality, "Alone Beside Her" shows no major experimentation for the band, which is a good thing. Each track is a journey of Homeric proportions into the oh-so fragile human psyche. Robinson scribes tales of agony and ecstasy with the human heart as the main character. He explores the ugly effects of loss, grief, bereavement, overwhelming desire, the beauty of love, and other incapacitating emotions. Robinson's lyrics are highly poetic, like the Transcendentalist school of poetry; he paints vivid images of nature and connects these images with our own existence or, in the case of "The Forever Dance", describes his natural surroundings to reminisce on times of joys. "A Rose for a Dying Muse" is possibly the most powerful song on the album. This track is an elegy to a fallen friend. "A Rose for a Dying Muse" exemplifies the Shroud of Bereavement sound. The music covers many stages of intense emotions experienced during a time of great loss. Serene female vocals, provided courtesy of Jen D'onofrio, coupled with sorrow-filled violin and keyboards takes the listener through a period of sadness. A period of anger occurs when distorted guitars and angry, death growls come into the fold. The female vocals combined with the death vocals create a sense of insanity, like sadness tugging at one side of your brain and anger on the other to create a maddening effect. The best part of the song comes during a militaristic drum march, which represents Robinson proudly marching as a pall bearer. Near the end of the track, he seems to explode with anger in the realization that he will never see his friend again. Here the music crescendos with rage, showing the band playing its fastest. Blasting drums and bestial growls hammer home these ugly emotions. Shroud of Bereavement is the equivalent to Therion suffering from depression and refusing to take their medication. "Alone Beside Her" is a unlikely marriage of two disparate style of music: death doom and classical music, yet the group expertly blends the styles to compliment the heavy emotions presented through out each song. It is a must-have album for fans of My Dying Bride, Virgin Black, Morgion, and Arcturus. Darren Cowan Back to Reviews