There is no better way, mentally that is, to get away from the heat (even though it is October) and the sunny days than listening to dark, cold music. So, not being a huge fan of sun and heat, Burden Of Grief came like manna from the sky and helped me to travel to dark and cold worlds.

THE 11TH HOUR is a newly formed band. Ed Waeby (known from GOREFEST, HAIL OF BULLETS and AYERON) joined forces with Rogga Johansson (EDGE OF SANITY, PAGANIZER, DERANGED) to make something outside Death Metal. This is not the first time that those two collaborate, since they have a Death Metal project called DEMIURG. But here we are dealing with a Doom Metal path. As their bio says, this is a wish come true for both of them, since they do love Doom Metal.

Burden Of Grief is a concept album, so I think. Before writing about the album as far as the music concerns, it would be nice to make a small summary about the story. The album talks about someone that has been diagnosed ... with a terminal lung disease, haunted by unspeakable nightmares forcing him to revisit the blackest days of his life. So, facing the end, the man is trying to redeem himself from his troubled past. The album starts from his dark room and his thoughts, to the graveyard.

Here we are dealing with six compositions of pure Doom Metal. The tempo is slow and gets you in the mood to see/feel/understand what the hero of this story lives. Listening to Ed's clean vocals, the first thing that came to mind was Chapter VI from CANDLEMASS. He doesn't have the range that Thomas Vikstrom has, but the combination was the one that made me think of that. The voices gives and goes from clean ones (that represents the main character despair) and growl ones by Rogga (represents his bitterness and determination to escape the fires of hell that he fears await him). Even though this clean/growl combination surely helps the story to go on, I prefer the clean ones. Not because Rogga's vocals are bad, on the contrary, but maybe because of the previously mentioned parallelism with one of my favorite albums.

Burden Of Grief surely is a very good debut album. Nice melodies and riffs and the keyboards fill in the music nicely without becoming the main instrument, most of the times. Hopefully, with the help by their record company, THE 11TH HOUR will make a strong first appearance in the Doom Metal scene during 2009.