I learned about the Dutch doom metal band Officium Triste when I had to review their previous album Reason. This was in the beginning when I learned about funeral doom metal. Uber-melancholic music, depressing as hell, but slow and heavy, which I like. This album made a good impression, and now they bring us the follow up entitled Giving Yourself Away.

 

This new record immediately sounded different to me, but I constantly forgot to compare it to the previous record, so it took me a while to come to the conclusion that Reason is just way heavier than Giving Yourself Away. Heavier in the musical department as well as in the vocals. On the forefront of Officium Triste’s music you now mainly hear the melancholic lead guitar and the enchanting synthesizers. It creates a magical atmosphere that on occasions sounds like film score music to me.

 

While this relaxing and spacey yet depressing mood the album breathes is cool on the other hand, but when I listened to Reason again it made a bigger impression than Giving Yourself Away. It’s also probably because I’m not too impressed by Pim’s clean vocals, but quite satisfied with his brutal stuff. With enough echo on the clean vocals he manages to get away with it from time to time, but there are a handful of parts where it really irritates me. But this is entirely personal I guess.

 

So for me the brutality of the previous record stands on a higher platform than the dramatic beauty of Giving Yourself Away. Fans of the band will probably dig this one easily, and I guess most fans of this type of music will, because the compositions are still quite good. Think of the early Anathema and the old My Dying Bride.