2. The Moaning, Blood From Stone (1997)For a bit of background on The Side Gallery, a five-part weekly column about underappreciated melodic death metal, go here - and don't forget to check out last week's entry, "Splenium for Nyktophobia" by Uncanny! Strictly speaking, very little about The Moaning or their 1997 album Blood From Stone is unique. I would consider them part of a class of bands, including Unanimated and A Canorous Quintet that took the death metal part of the Swedish melodeath metal format as far as it could go before the Gothenburg template took over and drove it to extinction. This is to say that, like those bands, The Moaning are clearly a death metal band first and foremost; they just happen to also not shy away from upbeat dual-guitar harmonies, which distinguishes them among their contemporaries, but doesn’t define them. Sonically, it’s a step removed from Uncanny and closer to what we more readily recognize as melodeath today. The Moaning bear more than a passing resemblance to Gothenburg’s great outsider, Dissection, in the way they wed sweepingly epic minor-key shred to galloping rhythms and a lyrical bent toward the morbid; shades of The Somberlain make their way into “Of Darkness I Breed” and into “Dreams In Black,” the album’s longest and most fluid compositions. Unfortunately, the nuances of their music (admittedly few, but there!) can get lost in the the production, which seems to mix the drums and guitars equally. It’s a bizarre move for a genre that depends so much on its riffs, and reminds me of the “necro” sound so many second-wave Norwegian black metal bands were pursuing at this time. It’s sometimes hard to discern what The Moaning’s guitarists are doing over the cymbals, making this a more challenging listen than most other melodeath of the time. But, once you’ve made peace with that flaw, it’s not difficult to see that The Moaning are accomplished musicians who seem to genuinely enjoy the music they play. Despite lyrics about grief, “mental shadowzones,” and escalating levels of pain (Invisible pain? “Still Born.” Unspeakable pain? “Dying Eternal Embers.” Everlasting pain? “Dark Reflections.”), their vision of this then-burgeoning genre was to approach it like rock n’ roll, beating Carcass at the game they played on Swan Songs just the year before: Blood From Stone is all about its high-octane riffs and ghoulish energy, leaving little room for acoustics or clean singing. The vocals may occasionally lapse into spoken-word or even interjections of punkish shouting, but these instances are few and far between; the album is dominated by a shrill gargle that, if sometimes over-the-top, is quintessentially melodeath, and it rarely lets up. Like its cover art, which depicts an offering of skulls at the foot of some demonic statue in a moonlit forest, picking up an album like Blood From Stone can feel like stumbling into a well-kept secret. Discovering an entire cache of excellent melodeath songs heard by few is undeniably exciting; it’s a privilege to be privy to what others have overlooked or forgotten. If for no other reason than that simple little thrill, check out The Moaning’s only full-length, and stay for the diversion from your 3,000th listen to Slaughter of the Soul and Storm of the Light’s Bane. You owe it to yourself. -Brian L.
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