August 2025 - Feature Release - The Fallen Edition

For my nomination in The Fallen this month, I have gone with the latest album from Mares of Thrace, with their stunning release from the year, The Loss.  This is a real tough listen in so many regards, with the them for the record being the five stages of grief.  So don't expect much in the way of positivity here.  But then again this is The Fallen clan and this is a sludge metal record so I gues we can deal with it.

Leave your comments below or better still, write a review.

https://metal.academy/releases/60161

My review from earlier this year:

Themed around the Kubler-Ross model (the five stages of grief), Mares of Thrace fourth album is an uncomfortable listen for anyone who has endured any kind of loss. Be that the death of a loved one, the breakdown of a relationship or the end of a friendship, The Loss feels multi-faceted in its possible applications for its listeners. Playing as a multitude of elements, ranging from noise rock through to sludge and on into acoustic passages, MoT keep the attention with this array of seemingly transparent yet emotionally heavy collection of tracks.

Previously unknown to me until this past week, the duo of Thérèse Lanz and Casey Rogers have made an impact immediately in my world. Whilst the tracks are charges with a jarring and lumbering intensity, the riffs do not rely on simple heaviness for impact. They have an almost loose quality to them, played as if in organic creation in some jam session, their blend of dark rock ‘n roll adding an interesting edge to proceedings. Similarly, the drums follow an uncomplicated path. Sat just right in the mix, they undertake the perfect supporting role. Operating just under the fuzzy haze of the strings they are a solid foundation for the bashing bleakness of The Loss.

The star of the show though is most definitely the vocals. As you would expect from my description of the album thus far, the vocals of Thérèse are not pretty. They are incredibly versatile in the reactions they can invoke in the listener, however. For me they mirror frustration, desperation, unfathomable sorrow, scathing fury and stinging vitriol across the nine songs that make up the record. At times they do bring tears to my eyes, such is the level of pleading futility that is on display on some songs. It feels like they are on occasion, seeking refrain from the relentless cycle of grief that I so brilliantly exemplified by the music. I am no expert of the Kubler-Ross model, but it feels like the songs are well researched and as a result are performed in a legitimate and convincing way.

The album highlight for me is penultimate track, ‘The Fifth Stage: Depression’. Anyone with any experience I would imagine would find this track a valid exploration of the horrible affliction. Here, the desperation borders on being demented. The utter, all-consuming sense of being completely overwhelmed and rendered dysfunctional by the illness is exhibited in HD on this track. You can hear the vulnerability, the rawness of losing someone and the agonising disintegration of your reality at the same time.

MoT have the uncanny ability to make their songs sound as the track titles suggest they should. ‘Complicated Grief’ has an air of challenge to it, for example. Meanwhile, shock, anger, denial and even acceptance all get personified in the corresponding track performances. The Loss is (ironically) an album that gives me so much. Possibly an early contender for album of the year, it has connected with me so instantly and so effortlessly. It is one of those albums that I am beyond being merely entertained by, I am genuinely grateful to have heard it.

5/5

Wow! Sounds great from your review. I haven't heard of these guys before so will add them to my to-do list.

I have been following Mares of Thrace for a while now, since their 2012 album The Pilgrimage in fact and I was a big fan of previous album The Exile, so I was looking forward to this one. The Loss is essentially a concept album dealing with the five stages of grief, a theme eminently suited to the band's desperate and anguished version of sludge metal.

Band mainstay, guitarist / vocalist Thérèse Lanz has always had a striking vocal approach, maintaining levels of aggression many can only futilely hope to achieve, but here on The Loss she has ascended to a whole new level of vocal anguish and fury, imparting additional heft to the album's concept of grief and loss. Production-wise, since Casey Rogers jumped on board as musician and engineer / producer the band have never sounded better with his production work increasing the depth and basic heaviness of their sound, adding real weight to their already existing nihilistic aggression. The riffs are very good and are rendered crushingly heavy by Rogers' work behind the desk with a huge bottom end which also doesn't appear to flatten out the upper registers or compromise Thérèse's anhuished shrieks or wails.

The instrumentation and songwriting has once more improved with The Loss taking on aspects of atmospheric sludge, often combining the hulking, atmospheric layering of Neurosis with the visceral rawness of Eyehategod which has the effect on the listener of being bowed by crushing weight whilst being sharply stabbed with stinging barbs. The album is instrumentally coherent, yet never becomes samey with each track having a feel of its own, in keeping with the theme of each track covering a different stage of the grieving process.

I find an honesty and openness in Mares of Thrace's releases that you don't necessarily encounter that often, with Thérèse's vocals in particular giving the impression that she probably has an intimate knowledge of this latest album's concept. But not only that, she also has the vocal expressiveness to be able to impart a convincing taste of the awful and debilitating effects of dealing with such an emotionally charged subject. This is the kind of release on which the Fallen thrives and, despite the emotionally challenging material, this is a genuinely impressive and relevant addition to the clan's canon and if this is a just world it will see the duo gain much wider acclaim.

A solid "A" grade from me (4.5/5).