My first glimpse of Wedding In Hades was through the 2010 music video for their song ‘Widow’. The auguries were good.  A bunch of miserable, ashen-faced blokes rocking out in a church to a moody mix of My Dying Bride, Type O and The Cure whilst some woman in a cowl traipses about in the woods.  An immediate and enjoyable track, seemingly aware of its own cheesiness and content to revel in it. Sure, the song doesn’t really go anywhere after it kicks off, and it is a bit forgettable, but this could be fun. Right?

Well…. not really. ‘Misbehaviour’ is too mixed-up and po-faced to really enjoy. Things seem quite promising on opener ‘Forsaken’, which starts with some decent mid-period MDB-style riffs, suddenly gearing up with an urgent, rattling DM chug before falling back into an abyss of crawling, minimalist funeral doom. There are some good, surging riffs emerging from the murk, but they are played over and over and over, dragging the songs out with an endless repetition that’s boring rather than mesmeric. There is a spark of promise, but it’s smothered by a wholly predictable cut-and-paste approach that blights every song on the album.

The songs all feel largely ramshackle and flat, although they are loosely held together by some admittedly striking and occasionally beautiful riffs. ‘Men to the Slaughter’ plods sullenly along to a bleak and brooding melody before an excellent, deliciously miserable guitarline bursts through with full force, suddenly evocative and powerful, draping itself over the song like heavy rain. ‘Sleeping Beauty’ has more of a trad-doom feel, gentle in pace and with guitars full of sorrowful, pastoral warmth accompanied by soaring clean vocals, the track briefly taking off whilst reminding strongly of Mirror of Deception. Some standard doom-death chugging finishes off the song in decent yet perfunctory fashion. It’s frustrating, as the songs are constantly threatening to turn into something special but always seem to stall and fall away before they can get there.

‘Dust in a Stranger’s Eyes’, slows things right down, its riffs drawn out and morose and wrapped in slivers of synth and violin, contemplative and delicate but unfortunately still wholly formulaic. ‘Almost Living (But Not Dead Yet’) is more polished and poppy, reminding of The Foreshadowing with its yearning guitars, drifting keyboards and nicely-executed wounded croons. ‘Men to the Slaughter (Reprise)’, is similarly gentle and bittersweet, edging towards a gothic rock sensibility with its airy, meandering solos and searching piano. It’s hardly original, but credit where credit is due: the vocalist’s faltering, melancholy imitation of Katatonia’s Jonas Renske here is spot on.

‘Regrets’ is another plodding and predictable number, all slow-burning chugs and oasis of fragile Spanish guitar when- holy shit! A sudden massive, pounding heavy metal riff appears out of absolutely nowhere like a fugitive from a Grand Magus album, as the song awkwardly crashes into ‘The One to Blame’. There’s no real progession though, just robotic repetition followed by another equally sudden and unexpected leap into some random, clattering  thrash/punk that bizarrely transitions back into yet more synth-laden gothic doom. It’s a brave move in some ways, but it doesn’t work, sounding disjointed and carelessly tossed together, as if the band got bored by their own songs and decided to throw something different into the mix just for the hell of it.

Overall ‘Misbehaviour’ is a difficult album to recommend, because as aside from the odd diverting moment or gratifying riff it’s just far too dull. The vocals aren’t bad, whether guttorally growled or delicately intoned, and the album isn’t without atmosphere, but any energy or investment generated by its dirgey, delving hooks largely goes to waste due to the lack of any interesting progression in the songs. It ultimately sounds turgid and vacuous, and listening to the album i constantly find myself twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to hurry up and actually happen. It’s a scattershot, largely directionless album that rarely feels like more than the sum of its parts; a lonely vigil sat waiting for a payoff that sadly never comes.

(4.5/10 Erich Zann)

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