The stories and ideas that inspire the lyrics and music in metal albums are, at least in the minds of most listeners, of secondary importance to an album’s audio sensations, even when those narratives and notions were vital to the people who created the album. The same is true of stories about how an album came to exist at all.
To be honest, many times (most of the time?) a metal album’s conceptual themes just aren’t that novel or compelling, or they’re poorly rendered, especially in the lyrics. Just as often, the events that brought a band together and led to the making of the music, usually involving the surmounting of myriad misfortunes, turn out to be not very interesting, which in many instances might mainly be the fault of how the story is told.
In all these respects, however, the comeback album of the Belgian death/doom band My Lament is an exception to the norm.
Certainly from our perspective, My Lament‘s own description of how they made the album, what they sought to achieve, and how they interpret the results, makes for some excellent reading. As “band comments” go (and we’ve seen thousands here at NCS over more than a dozen years), it’s very well-written, and very entertaining. It also makes the idea of spending 51 minutes with The Season Came Undone (a fairly big ask) more intriguing.
Their commentary is better than average in part because it comes from a place of maturity. The band have been a band for more than 20 years. Over that stretch of years the core of the group — founding members Steph Sarlet (bass) and Vincent Jacobs (drums), soon joined by Paul Broeren on guitar, has remained the same. Vocalist/guitarist Robrecht became a permanent member much later, in the long interval between the band’s debut album (2009’s Broken Leaf) and the new one, but he had played with the band as a live member before that.
The maturity contributes to the quality of the commentary and the music, but it also sits behind the music in more ways than one. As the band says, “My Lament has been around for over twenty years: the age when you start asking why.”
A good question. Why make a new album, with a release date more than 14 years after the last one, and eight years after their last EP (2015’s Sorrow)? Why make the effort? What do you put into it? After such a long time, where do the inspirations come from now?
The commentary we’ve been referring to eloquently addresses those questions, and we’ll provide all of it below, but for now we’ll pick just one example.
The album’s penultimate track is named “November“. The band chose it as the subject of a lyric video to help spread the news about the album. Here’s what they’ve said about it:
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely what “November” is about, but if you have ever walked for hours in the pouring rain, not knowing where to or why, drenched to the skin and imagining that layers and layers of you are eroding in rivulets streaming down, down, into the bubbling puddles forming in the street and down the sewer drains to who knows what distant darkness until nothing is left, then this song is for you, my friend.
In the song itself, “November” brings the death and the doom in ways that ardent fans of the two genres will expect and likely desire, wrapped in the chill, the grey days, and the dying leaves of the month for which it’s named.
It moves slowly, with grim, heavy abrasion in the low end and physical punch in the beats, and Robrecht‘s deep, gritty growls add to the music’s beclouded and scarring effects. On the other hand, the melodies that wail in the high end manifest heartbreak in stirring tones, and Robrecht‘s other voice, the somber yet nuanced singing one, is also emotionally affecting.
“November” is unusual for this style of music because it’s not very long, not even reaching the 3 1/2 minute mark. It’s so well-written and well-executed that it easily could have gone on much longer. Some of us will wish it had, but sometimes it’s better to leave listeners wanting more rather than beginning to feel like a song has worn out its welcome.
One more example for now. My Lament says this about the album’s second track:
“My Mausoleum” is special to us. Four years ago, our bass player Steph sat us down to reveal that she was a woman born in the wrong body, and had come to the immensely difficult but inevitable decision to transition. That very night, after a long and emotional talk, “My Mausoleum” began to take shape. While the verses closely trace Steph’s account of the loneliness she endured “for forty years or more”, the second part of the song prefigures the liberation she would eventually find by breaking out and becoming herself. Today, Stephanie is a proud and beautiful woman.
Steff‘s bass achieves a place of prominence in the song itself, as do vivid drum fills, and they back up a soulful but stricken guitar harmony that sets the tear-stained hook very damned fast. The vocals are again an effective contrasting tandem of tones, and the evolution of the melodies are equally effective in channeling both the oppressiveness of near-hopelessness (through a distorted, dismal, crawling riff and shrill emanations high above) and feelings of frustration and maybe of determination (through feverish fretwork, backed by rambunctious percussion).
Unlike “November“, “My Mausoleum” stretches to nearly the 8-miniute mark, making it the album’s longest song, but it’s again very well-constructed, so well that it’s easy to lose track of time. It’s also a hook-laden song, which is a hallmark of the album as a whole, not just evident in those two songs but in every other one.
The contrasts in those songs between craggy heaviness and ethereal, ringing lightness, between the abyssal roars and the dark but moving singing, also persist through the rest of the album, as do the general emotional cloudiness of the moods.
But the band also find plenty of ways to keep the songs varied, whether it’s the slugging grooves, tumbling tom-drums, and fleet-fingered soloing in the opener “Everything Goes to Waste“, the ominous jolting chords and slow-flowing, spellbinding melodies of “Fallacy“, or the mystical glittering arpeggios and the moments of bleak, towering grandeur in “Like Fallen Rain“.
The music’s not always slow or mid-paced either. The band dial up the jittery energy and hard-punching intensity in “Oh, Fall” and “Dying of the Light” (which is also home to some excellent soloing sorcery), and they bring in bursts of riveting guitar frenzy and rampantly hurtling drums in “Like Something Almost Being Said” (which opens with a very interesting instrumental overture).
And the remastered version of “Life Will Be the Death of Me“, which powerfully closes the album, proves to be a real crusher, notwithstanding its plaintive piano keys and crystalline darting guitar-work, but does its own part to kick up adrenaline levels too.
Well, we could go on, but it’s time to share the complete commentary from the band that we promised we’d share with you. Of course, if you haven’t already started, I’m sure they won’t mind if you start listening to our full stream of the album (further down below) as you read. If you don’t, you’ll miss one of the best death/doom albums 2023 has yet produced.
MY LAMENT COMMENTS:
How do you write a metal album these days when so many incredible sounding masterpieces come out every month? How do you make it worthwhile, how do you stand out?
These questions weighed on us when we started writing what was to become “The Season Came Undone”. My Lament has been around for over twenty years: the age when you start asking why. We remembered our own favorite albums from the past and how they lingered with us in pivotal times in our lives, with songs taking turns to be our absolute favorite for a while until they were all ingrained in the fabric of our memory.
We wanted more than just a powerful sound and production, more than a collection of amazing riffs and killer solos. We wanted to craft songs. Songs with a beginning, an arc and an end. Memorable, recognizable, distinct. Accessible, but with something to reveal with each successive listen. Songs that grab you by the shoulders to a quiet place and whisper a hot flurry of urgent confessions in your ear. Maybe one song will stand out first, maybe the one with the hook in the chorus, or the one with the gripping intro. But we hope they will each come forward in their own time and in their own way.
If you were to look for an overarching theme, the chorus of opening track “Everything Goes to Waste” is a good place to start: “Everything carries the taste / Of future decay”. With that, the song neatly sums up what is to be expected on the rest of the album and in life.
But listen, too: it rhymes, it has a cheerful lilt. It looks reality straight in the eye with a defiant smirk. Optimistic pessimism, you might call it.
Ruin as a part of nature’s ruthless cycle is reflected in the album art: two physalis berries, one fresh, the other a dried-out husk. Inside the Digipack, hidden under the CD itself, is a trompe-l’oeil depiction of a fly in the baroque tradition of the musca depicta. Painters would include such a detail in an otherwise perfect portrait or still life, perhaps as a reminder of the ubiquity of death, the stench of decay already fingering the overripe fruit in the bowl.
Musically, bittersweet harmonies in both guitars and vocals are a constant. Vincent drums with the thoughtful precision of an uncivil engineer. Steph’s bass rings dark and clear like black ice, or gnarrs like a wild animal. Both guitarists take flight in distinctive leads: Robrecht’s are nimble as a sparrowhawk on the hunt, Paul’s majestic and meditative, a condor rising on the warming mountain air.
Robrecht’s lyrics strive for brevity. There is wordplay to unpack, layers and feints and labyrinths. But at heart they remain playful, simple and direct, not heavy-handed. Devastating truth bombs are delivered with a sardonic undertone, as if to say: the meaning of life is artfully revealing its lack of meaning. There are echoes from 20th-century poetry. Nature, especially the changing of seasons, opens the inward gaze to wider horizons.
To say these reflections are personal does not do them justice: these are no streams of raw emotion, no dear diary moments. Instead, a song like “Like Fallen Rain” does something more: it elevates the wrench of an impossible longing to an almost unbearably pure abstraction.
“My Mausoleum” is special to us. Four years ago, our bass player Steph sat us down to reveal that she was a woman born in the wrong body, and had come to the immensely difficult but inevitable decision to transition. That very night, after a long and emotional talk, “My Mausoleum” began to take shape. While the verses closely trace Steph’s account of the loneliness she endured “for forty years or more”, the second part of the song prefigures the liberation she would eventually find by breaking out and becoming herself. Today, Stephanie is a proud and beautiful woman.
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely what “November” is about, but if you have ever walked for hours in the pouring rain, not knowing where to or why, drenched to the skin and imagining that layers and layers of you are eroding in rivulets streaming down, down, into the bubbling puddles forming in the street and down the sewer drains to who knows what distant darkness until nothing is left, then this song is for you, my friend.
Enough. We leave the rest for you to discover. Be well.
Sincerely, My Lament
The Season Come Undone will be released by Ardua Music on September 22nd. It’s likely to appeal to fans of Swallow The Sun, My Dying Bride, and Paradise Lost. For more info and to pre-order, check out the links below.
ARDUA MUSIC:
https://www.arduamusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ArduaMusicLabel
https://www.instagram.com/arduamusiclabel/
http://arduamusic.bandcamp.com/
MY LAMENT:
https://mylament.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/mylamentdoom
https://www.instagram.com/mylamentband