Band:	Wine From Tears
Album:	Glad To Be Dead
Style:	Death doom metal
Release date:	June 2013

01. For Those Who Died Asleep (Intro)
02. Allergic Sun
03. What Are You Waiting For?
04. In Memory Of The Truth
05. Let Me In
06. Like A Fallen Leaf
07. The Light At The End Of The World
08. Silence No More

Glad To Be Dead is the sophomore effort from Samara's Wine From Tears, following up the oddly named Through The Eyes Of A Mad. Not familiar with their fragment-titled initial offering, the 2013 vintage was my first taste of WFT.

Being a death-doom outfit from Russia, they show the influences one might expect: Saturnus, Officium Triste, etc. Also have to wonder if there was some weepy cross-pollination with another Russian death-doom act in the Solitude family, Amber Tears. The odd but enjoyable bagpipe sounding lead tone I've mentioned in Amber Tears' works also surfaces here, as in "Like A Fallen Leaf". (Insert lame joke here about wine from amber tears being a Grenache Rose?)

Also being a Russian death-doom band on the Solitude family, in addition to traits similar to the aforementioned acts, one might expect full, lush production in which everything has its place.
This would also hold true.

For the most part it sounds gorgeous.

The instruments are balanced, keys in the background adding atmosphere over some evocative leads, plodding drums. All of which is rather well executed if not particularly original. Song structure is well done in that it slowly builds up in intensity a bit as they develop. While there are a few (super slo mo) headbangy moments, there aren't any shocking wild left-turns or anything. I guess the simplest description is they flow.

Vocally they have some great death rawrs, and while the clean vocals aren't anything to email home about, they're not abysmal either. They toss in some female vocals, allowing them to take center stage on the closer, "Silence No More".

While Wine From Tears might be Glad To Be Dead, listening to GTBD certainly didn't make me feel sorry to be alive.