URNE - Feast On Sorrow [LP]

There are times in life when it feels like darkness will consume the light. Suffering. Loss. The emptiness that follows. At a distance, we can steel ourselves against the grim inevitabilities of disease, dementia and deterioration in old age, but when more intimately faced with their impact, it becomes easy to imagine some hidden demon gorging on the misery wrought. From such pain was birthed Urne's savage second album A Feast On Sorrow. "There were a lot of dark times," sighs frontman Joe Nally. "Losing people is a horrible thing; when the reality hits, it shocks. I was full of pent-up emotion - anger, confusion - and I could only seem to release that through aggression. This is much darker. There were quite a few 'fun' elements to our first LP Serpent & Spirit. There aren't many of those here." Alongside mercurial guitarist Angus Neyra and newly-recruited master drummer James Cook, the mission was to create something definitive. Unexpectedly, they'd be assisted in that by Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier - already a vocal fan of the band - who invited the Londoners to record at his Silver Cord studio in Brooklyn, New York and came onboard to produce. From blistering opener opener "The Flood Came Rushing In" and the brutalist introspection of "To Die Twice" to epic 11-minute pillars "A Stumble Of Words" and "The Longer Goodbye/Where Do The Memories Go", the blend of wreckage and release is utterly breathtaking. "The personal story I'm telling in this album is still ongoing, but it feels like I've been able to say what I needed to say," Nally concludes. "It was an incredibly cathartic experience to be able to write this album, to scream it, to hear it back. I've got my emotions out. I've got my meaning out. I've got my message out. What I needed to do is done."