Falun is a small town and capital of the municipality of Dalarna in the central part of Sweden. A place that has been famous for its mines and traditional red wooden miniature horses. Falun is also hometown to the band IN MOURNING whose third release "The Weight of Oceans" is the subject of this Metal inspection and review. The style of the new record is Progressive Death Metal a typical style for bands coming from Sweden. As I have never heard of them before I checked briefly the style of the previous works and they differentiate from this one as they had Gothic elements and the progressive / slow passages were not that common.

Progressive melodic Death Metal has been suffering lately from repetition and absence of differentiation and new ideas and good releases are few and far between. I haven't been impressed by anything lately, since NAMI's "Fragile Alignments" because it had aggressiveness, emotion, mystery, complexity, great structure and melody in the right proportions to make a great record. So does "The Weight of Oceans" deliver similar qualities as a record?

The opener "Colossus" evolves slowly with an imposing synthesizer followed by an awesome bass line and phased guitar picking which are followed by heavy guitar and brutal vocals. "Colossus" runs for approximately 9 minutes and is the longest song of the record. "A Vow to Conquer the Ocean" enters in faster tempo reminding of AMON AMARTH in the beginning but changes later into slow tempo melody and then again back to the starting structure. "From a Tidal Sleep" is another heavy song in slow tempo and an eerie feeling and has the first clean vocal passage of the record. "Celestial Tear" is very different song having lots of clean parts and being very reminiscent of KATATONIA. Things get heavy again with "Convergence" which follows in the similar structure with heavy and clean parts. "Sirens" is a short part of piano that is introducing the "Isle of Solace" which comes with a blast beat and then changes to more conventional Death Metal riffing. "The Drowning Sun" continues on the same heavy mid tempo style. The final song of the record "Voyage of a Wavering Mind" which closes the 61 minute record is a slow tempo song with lots of Doom Metal elements.

IN MOURNING are borrowing elements from the Swedish scene and I can identify influences from AMON AMARTH and KATATONIA as I wrote in the above. The artwork also reminded me of MASTODON because of the giant octopus. But IN MOURNING filter those influences so great that they deliver a solid result that is really worth listening to lots and lots of times. And that is because they achieve to include all those elements that make such a record a pleasure to listen. They have great changes in their songs, they have nice eerie melodies, they deliver great emotion, mystery and they always have something to say in their songs. The great production helps in every way with all the instruments sounding properly. In conclusion, "The Weight of Oceans" is a great record that came out of the blue and I strongly suggest it to all the fans out there.