Review by Sonny for Shape of Despair - Angels of Distress (2001)

Let's get one thing straight, this album is not depressing. How can something that sounds so amazing be depressing? The only depressing music is bad music and this is most definitely not that. Sure, this conjures up a melancholy atmosphere and may thematically tackle depressing or morbid topics that the majority of people don't wish to think about, but that does not a depressing album make.
The songs are slow, with heaving guitar and growled vocals, but there is also a lightness to the melodies provided by the violin, subtle keys and the female vocals. I love this contrast in sounds between the abyssal and the angelic that really great funeral doom excels at and this pulls that off fabulously well.
Fallen, the opening track, serves as a kind of overture, introducing the themes the listener can expect to hear over the next fifty-odd minutes and setting up the rest of the album magnificently. Tracks like Quiet These Paintings Are and ...To Live for My Death... have some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful melodies contrasting and accentuating the sheer despair you feel in Pasi Koskinen's anguished vocals as he growls out his impending and irrevokable loss.
Ok, maybe I have made it sound like a depressing album, but this truly is an album that manages to find and express the beauty that can be found in even the darkest of places, gifting the listener a knowledge that there are others who understand these feelings, making it not a source of depression, but a flickering flame of hope for any finding themselves in the depths of despair.