EP Review: Drowning Hour - The Pain of Loss
Grief does not announce itself with fanfare, and neither does Drowning Hour. There is something quietly fitting about the fact that one of the more crushing death-doom records to surface this summer has crawled out of Shrewsbury, better known for its abbey and its flower show than for funereal metal. Yet here we are: The Pain of Loss, a four-track EP of atmospheric blackened death-doom, built entirely by hand, nothing but four people and their grief. The crawling desolation of My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, the frostbitten melancholy of Katatonia and Anathema, the exploratory gloom of early Opeth. Drowning Hour make no secret of that heritage, and The Pain of Loss is unashamedly built from those materials: tempos dragged down almost to a standstill, riffs that move like something heavy being hauled across a floor, and an atmosphere thick enough to lean on. This is a properly DIY affair: Craig Gobold handles rhythm guitar, bass, and drums and mixed and mastered the thing himsel...
