The Sorrow follow in the wake of bands such as Trivium, In Flames and Slipknot. If you like those bands, by all means check them out. There are sections of "My Immortal Guardian" where an intoxicating melody creeps in, but it is soon crushed like a sickly beetle beneath the heavy boot of noise. Similarly "Scars" has catchy moments, it's just the music is too treacherous to entice me to visit this tuneful oasis very often. You can soon see the pattern developing, "Eyes Of Darkness" has sections of euphony. There's a fair amount of screaming too, but the song's relatively long running time means there's room for a piano coda, which raises my opinion of the band.

"Raising The Devil" has some ringing guitar, which is inviting. And you can't accuse The Sorrow of playing everything at the same volume and style. There is variety on offer here, even if I'm not particularly keen on the ingredients. Elsewhere there are fragments of light, such as during "From This Day On" but these elements aren't strong enough to satisfy me.

I'm reliably informed that The Sorrow's lyrics are more personal than on their debut album Blessings From The Blackened Sky . It will come as no surprise to fans of this genre to learn that the main emotion expressed is anger, with a side serving of disappointment. Does nobody make heavy music to express emotions such as joy, happiness and contentment? It would appear not.

I'm not a big enough expert on this type of music to place it within the context of the genre. The Sorrow do what they do well, it's just not a sound I enjoy. This might be the one time that I enjoy a band when they finally get round to 'selling out' and adopt a more 'commercial' direction to appeal to more fans.