### Shroud Of Despondency: Dark meditations in monastic seclusion

#### 06/04/11 || Khlysty

Shit, but do those black metal guys have a tendency of having ridiculously long and inane song and album titles. Y’know, there should be a rule that all metal albums must have titles like “Fuck You”, “Evisceration”, “Shit-eating pedophile”, “Kill Yerself” or “Newt Gingrich”, not some stupid words like “meditation” or “monastic seclusion”. Thass gay to the nth power, guys. As is the dead panda paint and all the other shit.

Not that Shroud Of Despondency are black metal per se. What they actually sound like, at least to these tormented ears, is as if Neurosis were deprived of 90% of their talent, were pumped full of brown acid and smack and were asked to write “progressive black metal” in their own way. The record starts with an acoustic ballad a la Neil Young, before proceeding to destroy all boundaries of barely good taste and compositional and structural inanity. Shit, but is this shit the shits.

I think that these guys are trying to play a brutal – prog kind of black metal that’s supposed to be desperate and “deep” and suicidal and all that shit. Well, it’s not. It’s boring and lacks coherence and musicality and anything else that might attract even the most jaded listener to it. It comes off as ridiculous and seriously pretentious, what with the howled vocals that are supposed to express, what? existential angst, but end up being laughably OTT, the neither strong nor weak guitars, the hippie-like ballads, the chorals and all the other shit the band burdens the already lame compositions with.

This is bad. Not, like, real bad, just plain bad. I won’t recommend it to anyone, except Smalley, who might be able to find some saving grace to this mess. To all the others, just avoid it, okay?

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: self-released
- Website: Shroud Of Despondency MySpace
- Band
- Michael Jurek: vocals
- Rory Heikkila: guitar
- Jon Liedtke: guitar
- Tyler Okrzesik: bass
- Jeremiah Messner: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Looking Out, Seeing One Last Ray of Light
- 02. Homo Homini Lupus
- 03. Parting of the Way
- 04. Sybil
- 05. Sullen Murmur Oppressive Stillness
- 06. Flicker of the Ardent Light
- 07. To Glisten In All The Colors Of Distress