I’ve been a fan of Moscow based doomsters The Morningside from the very first time I heard them, as they absolutely hit the sweet spot when it comes to my love of gothic doom. Building off some severe Katatonia and Agalloch worship, they were confidently branching out with more of their own ideas on their last EP Treelogia; all of which came from their love and mastery of the style that they had been working with from the beginning. It was quite reasonable to assume then that their next album would follow in the same vein, being a progression of the style that they had become synonymous with whilst asserting their own musical identity. Either that or they could suddenly pull a massive swerve on everyone and take things in a new melodic death direction…
For those used to putting on a Morningside album and being gently soothed by the sounds of rain and melodic progressive guitar sounds, the immediate aggressive onslaught of ‘Immersion’ must feel as welcome as a surprise penis in the earhole. With the initial surprise out of the way, you wonder whether this is really the same band, their inspiration now seemingly coming from the direction of Meshuggah, Carcass and Death’s Individual Thought Patterns. Given some time to settle in though and you can hear the same musician’s personality coming through within the new style. Igor Nitkin still has an impressive voice and it could be argued that it suits this style even better, whilst his guitar partnership with Sergey Chelyadinov remains as tight as ever. The melodies may not be quite as uplifting and beautiful as they once were, but there is still a real craft about the way they go about their business.
There are moments on here where the roots of the old band still remain strong, such as on ‘Deadwalk Drive’ which has much in common with Paradise Lost’s more recent output, particularly with regard to the guitar balance which echoes the melodic lead with crushing rhythm format they favour. By contrast ‘Sidewalk Shuffle’ sounds like a recent Carcass track which is no bad thing, although the constant changes of style and direction mean that this collection of songs are far easier to listen to as individual tracks rather than an album as a whole. The addition of clean singing on here feels like a bit of an own goal, especially given the strength of the vocals usually. In particular the entirely clean, minimalist ballad ‘The Letter’ is not only a complete and total departure from everything they have ever done, it’s also outrageously dull and a terrible note to end the album on.
In so many ways ‘Letters From The Empty Towns’ is a massive disappointment. For a band that had worked so hard developing their own unique style to then throw all that away with such a schizophrenic effort is a massive shame. Of course there’s nothing wrong with shaking things up a bit and experimenting, but this really is all over the place to such an extent that not only will they risk alienating existing fans, but they will struggle to pull in new ones on the basis of such a random selection of songs. On the plus side they are still a fantastic bunch of musicians and it is that alone that elevates this above the average. Even if they don’t return to the style they used on previous releases, I just hope they manage to settle on a style that works for them. Their songwriting and musicianship will take care of the rest.
(6.5/10 Lee Kimber)
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