This is the fourth album from Italian doom metal band Shores of Null.
I thoroughly enjoyed 2020’s single track album Beyond the Shores (on Death and Dying), so knew that I wanted to catch up with The Loss of Beauty when it appeared. Unlike its predecessor, this new album is divided into individual tracks, and delivers 55 minutes of material, (or 49 minutes without the bonus tracks).
The Loss of Beauty offers a wealth of melodic metal delights. Mournful and dark, yet more upbeat and energetic than you might be expecting, it’s a textured and melancholic slab of melodic doom that’s expressive in its delivery.
Shores of Null provide the listener with a range of styles and sub-genres to get their teeth into across this album. The songs mix together Gothic metal influences with elements of melodic black and death metal, but do this seamlessly, so that the band’s musical framework gels nicely into a coherent whole. You can hear bands such as Amorphis, Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Enslaved, Sentenced, and more, in Shores of Null’s sound, but never to the extent that these influences overshadow the band’s own material.
The Loss of Beauty is a work of beautiful darkness, one that benefits from crisp heaviness and a focus on a song-based approach. The balance of exquisite riffs and despondent atmosphere is judged well, allowing the band to both hit hard and build worldscapes with ease. The music is emotive and expressive, with a firm melodic edge and a singer who can hold his own against the best in the genre. The songs are well-written and have plenty of hooks. The album is well-crafted throughout, and the end product is professional, accomplished, and strong.
The Loss of Beauty is a very enjoyable and rewarding work of melodic doom metal, one that should hopefully find favour far and wide with fans of the style. If you’re partial to this sort of thing then make sure you don’t miss out on this.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 