With:	Darren (Vocals)
Conducted by:	Deadsoulman
Published:	06.03.2004
Band profile:	Mourning Beloveth
Album info:	The Sullen Sulcus

01. The Words That Crawled
02. It Almost Looked Human
03. The Insolent Caul
04. Narcissistic Funeral
05. My Sullen Sulcus
06. Anger's Steaming Arrows

The Words That Crawled

This was the first song written for the album and was included in the three-track promo we sent to prospective labels at the time. Lyrically it deals with the emotional turmoil one goes through/puts themselves through by thinking too much, thinking about the meaning of words spoken to a person and how they crawl and mutate in the brain.
When recording the Franks vocal parts were first meant to be words sung but while recording his part and the line ¡°blinking moment¡± came up Magz just laughed and said that those words sung sounded rather odd and he suggested the choir effect from frank This stirred memories of previous conversations we had had about this song and how it should work. When Frank recorded a few different tracks we knew this was the way to go.
This song is now the opener to our live set.

It Almost Looked Human

A track about how one feels when the whole world is against them and how one becomes an outcast to society and sometimes even to himself. The vocal interplay between growling and clear came about in a jamming session in franks flat and we had a bit of fun trying out different phrasings of the lyrics. This track appears as a bonus track on the Dust re-release through Sentinel. We had a nice little argument in the studio after two weeks recording, lack of medicine also had something to do with it. Adrian, the corporate whore he is(haha) suggested we put it on the re-release and after an initial spat of ¡°why,why why¡± we all agreed it was a good idea.

The Insolent Caul

This song deals with a certain way of looking at things, no matter how good things are there is always something in the distance that is going to fuck it up, basically pessimism on a grander scale. The song name came from the idea of how someone is born into the world with no pre conceptions of anything but as they gradually get older and realise that it is really not worth living they question why they were brought into the world in the first place, each breath is one closer to the grave indeed. Again we only played this song once live, at the first gig in Dublin of our Doomination of Europe tour. One of my favourite songs on the album, especially the mid section.
The artwork for this song brings us back to a story Adrian reminded of some time ago. We were looking for a cover of our demo and looking for a printer to do it so I brought an example of I think Confusion Corporation demo sleeve which had a baby on the front and bits of it fucked up. We showed it to the printer and were quickly ushered out of the shop without a word¡­when Paul showed us the image for this song it brought that story back

Narcissistic Funeral

A continuation of the theme of the last two songs, questioning our existence and why were we put on this wretched earth? The title idea is built around how someone opens up to the world only to be cut down, I think my favourite section of the entire album occurs when Frank sings the line ¡°there is something painful in the first spring bud of life¡±, that perhaps sums up the album. This has become a regular in our live sets and although it clocks in at over 14 minutes there is enough variety there to keep us interested.
The weeks before the Doomination of Europe tour we had been rehearsing upstairs in a rehearsal space and during the crunchy heavy bit I began stomping the floor to lend greater weight, the whole fucking room shook. I decided to keep this stomp for the tour so now we could be called stomping doom metal

My Sullen Sulcus

Nearly the title track, I have to change the name of this song when introducing it live to Our Sullen Sulcus for obvious reasons¡­..
A favourite song of a lot of people mainly for the torturously clean mid section that leads into the melody, however Tim doesn¡¯t really like the song so although it has appeared sporadically in our live set it is usually down to somebody requesting us to play it. A song about how certain things in our lives sometimes almost consume us and destroy us but without which we would be nothing¡­.if you can read between the lines of that statement and know us things will become a lot clearer ( or hazier).
Frank had his vocals for this riff as far back as 1996 when we used to party a lot in Chris De Burghs nannies place of all places¡­Frank had been fucking around with the riff acoustically while we were partying and we all just sat back in amazement as he sang it, the original lyrics go something like ¡° dark rivers they are flowing, to eternity¡­..¡± and the riff only came to us again before the album so we added it in. My vocal part in this section ahd been a plethora of ideas before the studio and I think Magz captured what I had in my head (without the words to explain it) perfectly

Angers Steaming Arrows

The last song written for the album and it is a bit different to what went before, the lack of slowness is the first thing I notice although from the first riff it seems an epic torturous song is about to erupt. Frank wrote the first riff when living alone and the first riff plays out to the words ¡° these four walls driving me mad¡± of which Frank was akin to saying around this period. That first riff to me is excellent but I feel I may have let it down a bit with the monotonous vocal approach. The imagery of that first passage is very vivid though and it was something I had been thinking about for years. We have never played this song live and unless we get a three hour set some night I don't think we will.