Band:	The Obsessed
Album:	Gilded Sorrow
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	February 2024

01. Daughter Of An Echo
02. It's Not OK
03. Realize A Dream
04. Gilded Sorrow
05. Stoned Back To The Bomb Age
06. Wellspring - Dark Sunshine
07. Jailine
08. Yen Sleep
09. Lucky Free Nice Machine

Painful to say.

There are few musicians in doom metal who can claim to have had such an influential career as Wino, building a reputation as one of the seminal musicians in the genre thanks to his work on many classic albums. The Obsessed is perhaps his greatest contribution to doom metal, setting a high bar for the genre. It is because of this high bar that any album that is good, but not great, is viewed as a disappointment. Gilded Sorrow may seem like a step down, but it is only because it is coming from a high place.

Still, Gilded Sorrow will keep you entertained, even if the tracks may not have you particularly chomping at the bit for more. "Daughter Of An Echo" has some good guitar work that will entrace you, while the reworked "Yen Sleep" is perhaps the pick of the bunch, and one of the few songs to really soar. It's not that the rest of the album falters, but its lack of highlights makes the album pale in comparison to their prior work.

It's not necessarily that The Obsessed have lost their touchl Wino still sounds on fine form on "Jailine", while newcomers Angleberger and Taylor fit in seamlessly, making the line-up transition almost unnoticeable. Indeed, when the material allows, the group show off their prowess, with the solo and groove of "Stoned Back To The Bomb Age" lumbering like a sledgehammer-welding drunk.

It perhaps does not not help that the production is too polished for a The Obsessed album; the sterile sonic vibe sounds great, but lacks the grimy, analogue feel that gave prior releases their soul, leaving the album to somewhat be a victim of sounding too good for what it is.

Still, the aforementioned weakness in the material is the biggest shortcoming on Gilded Sorrow; for a band that have been capable of releasing classics of the genre, they sound so bland and pedestrian here. If it wasn't for Wino's presence, you could easily mistake this as the work of yet another middling doom metal act. While it will have you nodding along and occasionally grip you for more than passive listening, much of it passes by in a mid-tempo blur.

It is testament to a band's quality when a middle of the road release is the worst they have put out, but that doesn't make the experience any more entertaining for the listener. Gilded Sorrow might have the veneer of The Obsessed on its cover, but scratch away at the surface and you find a surprisingly average doom metal release lurking underneath.