Review by Sonny for Mourning Beloveth / The Ruins of Beverast - Don't Walk on the Mass Graves (2020)
Mourning Beloveth kick us off with their offering I Saw a Dying Child in Your Arms - and it's a real beauty. Mournful and atmospheric with an obvious doom aesthetic, although it is actually a "clean" song apart from the backing vocals during the climax. Stripped down, lacking in either fuzzed-up riffs or growling vocals this is still allowed to build in the manner of all the best doom tracks. Quite a moving track.
Ruins of Beverast's contribution is Silhouettes of Death's Grace, a track that is doomy in it's atmosphere, but is heavily influenced by RoB's early black metal beginnings. It has an overall disconcerting quality to it, as if you can never quite pin it down. The guitars often sound eerily akin to church bells as they chime over the sonorous doom of the backing riff, particularly in the latter half after the midway tempo change when we get a whiff of atmo-black blasting.
An interesting release with two contrasting, yet complementary tracks of unconventional doom metal.