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Amazing, I get a promo package from Adipocere once again, only this time it's packed with some really good stuff, as in stuff I was going to get for myself anyway. Forgotten Tomb are a groundbreaking Italian band who have successfully combined depressive Doom with Black Metal to produce a unique sound. This is their third full-length album, and it is an impressive piece of work.

Nobody else really sounds like this band. Starting with a Black Metal base with raw production and tortured screaming vocals, Forgotten Tomb have mixed in heavy elements of Funeral Doom and Doomdeath and have yet managed to not be boring. I would have expected this to be tuneless crap played way too slow, but no. This is excellent stuff that comes off like Darkthrone crossed with old Paradise Lost. Slow and depressive, yes, but Forgotten Tomb have a powerful sense of melody that infuses their music with a melancholic Sentenced/Eternal Tears Of Sorrow vibe. Aside from the short interludes, almost all these songs are long, like the spellbinding "Alone", that is almost 12 minutes long, or the amazing 13 minutes of "House Of Nostalgia" that singlehandedly redefines the parameters of 'depressing'. This is the most bleak and despairing music I have ever heard, and makes crap like My Dying Bride sound lighthearted by comparison, and yet it is never less than compelling. The only thing that keeps this from a perfect score is the excess of instrumental tracks that take up too much space on this disc. Though even discounting those you are getting almost 60 minutes of music. It's just that I find they break the flow of the album for me. Still, that is a minor complaint.

The lyrics are excellent, and as harshly bleak as anything you are likely to ever see. Inside you get a look at the 'uncensored' cover that depicts a toddler sticking a gun in her mouth – not an album for the fainthearted at all.

Many, many bands seek to ride the BM wagon, but this is a band doing their own thing and succeeding at creating a new sound. Not only that, but these guys are the antithesis of posers, and they really mean this stuff. So "Love's Burial Ground" is truly music from the dark places in the heart. Despair was never so captivating.