Sadness - Ames De Marbre 1993

Sadness is an obscure band where I come from. I literally knew nothing of this band until I found it on this site. I got this release in a tape trade and upon hearing immediately fell in love. There is just something about it that grabs my attention. For a long time I could not even decide if this was a metal recording, the music, indeed is very gentle. The compositions are slow and layered out of sparse melodies, which are performed on almost clean guitars and a very pronounced distinctive bassline, but always with an underlying rhythm guitar crunch. The predominantly male vocals are a distinctive, soaring scream, keeping a point of reference to us metallers. Track 2 “Lucurs” is probably the best example of this approach as well as the best track here. The songs are masterfully written – comprehension requires many listens as there are many parts and the thread of musical narrative twists and turns, always building up to a climax. There are some well-placed female vocals on this as well, chanting and moaning their lyrics…All resulting in a beautiful and indeed very sad album. In other words this release is a very worthy one, but eccentric and unusual. It will not come to everyone’s taste and in fact is not extreme enough to appeal to most fans of Doom Metal. But if you want a challenging listen this is it, my only complaint is that it is too short!


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I bought this album long ago on a resale, was intrigued by the name of the band and the artwork of the CD. I used to like it enough, at least to value it for various reasons, mainly because there weren't many bands that were inspired by Gothic atmosphere at that time (as far as I know). Another thing is that this album is curiously theatric and eccentric, as the previous reviewer has mentioned, mainly due to the strange vocals that seem like struggling between feelings - they are hysteric without being decidedly brutal, there is something clean in them. The bad thing is that sometimes this kind of vocals gets me annoyed - they seem overdone, with pronounced accent, and sometimes don't stick with the melody - of course, it's my personal point of view.

Anyway, there are delightful female vocals too, as well as non-conventional instruments on some tracks. In particular, the song "Red Script" is very sweet - at some part through the song there come a nice violin, nice spoken female vocals, and a sweet melody. Lyrics are in English with some pieces in French and Spanish.

Still, I should say that it's a bit disturbing (although very curious and worthwhile) listen..

1. Ames de Marbre 04:20
2. Lueurs 06:07
3. Tristessa 02:00
4. Opal Vault 03:15
5. Tears of Sorrow 09:46
6. Red Script 07:15
7. Antofagasta 03:13
Genre: Gothic
Subgenre: Black
Bitrate: 320 k
Size: 83.08 MB
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