Shape of Despair is an apt name for a band that makes funeral doom of epic proportions. Crushing, desolate, sloooow, but equally beautiful and atmospheric, this Finnish group are masters of the genre. Their latest, self-titled, album is a collection of 7 rarities including early demo tracks and one new song ‘Sleeping Murder’.
The album opens with the new track, a typically bleak slab of atmospheric doom with Pasi Koskinen’s astonishingly gut rumbling, deep growled vocals adding to the desolate sound of the song. If this is a hint as to how their next studio album sounds, it’s sure to be a corker. An edited version of ‘Night’s Dew’, originally from the 2001 album ‘Angels of Distress’, appears next – cut to an unprecedented length of just over 4 minutes, it doesn’t seem to suffer from the edit, particularly as it is contains one of the fastest passages of any Shape of Despair song. Why such an edit was particularly necessary in the first place is a little unclear though. A pre-version of the lovely ‘Sylvan-night’ from 2000s ‘Shade Of…’ is an interesting addition, shorter and lacking some of the atmospherics of the later version’s outro section, it is still interesting to note the progression from an early version to the final one.
Following this is a track from Shape of Despair’s 1998 promo tape. The demo ‘Quiet These Paintings Are – Outro’ appeared later in the form of ‘Quiet These Paintings Are’, a personal favourite of mine from the ‘Angels of Distress’ album, a beautifully mournful track that moves effortlessly from crushing guitars to delicate instrumental passages in a 14 minute epic. The demo production quality is not perfect and there are a few crackles in the sound occasionally, but this doesn’t distract too much. It features vocals from Azhemin, rather too low in the mix unfortunately, so not very easy to make out. His growls are not as deep as those of the Pasi Koskinen’s in the 2001 version, but the song maintains the same mournful beauty and serves to demonstrate a band who from the early days had a clear idea of the sound and style that they wanted to create.
The next treat is 2 tracks from the very first and never released 1998 demo ‘Alone in the Mist’. The first track featured is ‘To Adorn’ – like the demo tape it suffers from a lower production value, the echoey vocals are hard to make out and the sound is a little muddy, but it is nonetheless a good track. ‘Shadowed Dreams’, which was later to appear on their 2000 debut ‘Shades of…’, again suffers from the ‘crackly demo’ effect but sounds if anything even more doom laden than the later version.
The album closes with the rarest track of all – a rehearsal tape recording from 1995, the very earliest days of Shape of Despair, featuring the track ‘In the Mist’ which would later appear on the 1998 demo and then on the ‘Shades Of…’ album. It has very low production quality unfortunately, that ‘recorded in a shed on a Dictaphone’ sound that many black metal fans seem to treasure, but still is quite a novelty to hear and it makes you realise just how long the band worked on perfecting their sound, with 5 years between this rehearsal and the release of their debut.
Over all, the album is an interesting collection of rare tracks, but as with any album like this - you do have to wonder as to the real point of it. Though the official band website blurb claims it is not just a fill in album for completists, it does seem your average listener would be better off just buying the albums with the final versions. Of course there are 2 unheard tracks, new song ‘Sleeping Murder’ and ‘To Adorn’ which only ever appeared on the demo, so it is definitely a treat for fans, but I would not recommend it to someone trying the band for the first time.
Standout Tracks: Sleeping Murder, Quiet These Paintings Are – Outro.
