Band:	The River
Album:	A Hollow Full Of Hope
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	June 2023

01. Fading
02. Exits
03. Tiny Ticking Clocks
04. A Vignette
05. Hollowful

Are you feeling doomed and gloomed? Well, perhaps The River will help uplift your miserable spirits with A Hollow Full Of Hope (or hopefully not put a downer on your perhaps otherwise good mood). I hope you've brought your handkerchief, because you'll probably need it to wipe those tears away.

The River are a doom metal band (in case you were wondering) that formed in the U.K. back in 1999. They're a band that officially have four full-length releases to their name, specifically Drawing Down The Sun (their debut released back in 2006), In Situ (2009), Vessels Into White Tides (2019), and now their latest release, Hollow Full Of Hope (released this year, in 2023, obviously). To put it shortly, this is an emotionally charged doom metal album, featuring five agonizingly sorrowful tracks that come to a total running length of 40 minutes in total. The tempo doesn't exceed a pedestrian pace, but rather focuses on a soft, thought-provoking, emotional journey for the listener's mind, with the intention of perhaps uplifting the listener's sorrowful mood. So here you'll be doing no headbanging as such, but rather sitting back and soaking up the powerful and hopefully encouraging atmosphere.

The opening track, "Fading", begins with an exceedingly slow and gentle acoustic melody, before Jenny Newton (who joined the band in 2018) brings her hauntingly soft vocals into play. As the track slowly builds up, light synth work is presented to add even more effect to an already sorrowful setting, which is then accompanied by twin acoustic melodies instead of the one. The track throughout is atmospherically dark, powerful, and perhaps even depressing, which ultimately sets the emotionally miserable tone for the duration of the album to come.

As I mentioned earlier, the tempo never really exceeds a pedestrian pace, but there's a variety of elements in place that give the album its true doomy effect without sounding too dull or repetitive; "Tiny Ticking Clocks" is a good example, a track which features a gentle, sweeping violin passage and a measured, hypnotic strumming rhythm from the acoustic guitar, and the lyrics really give the album that compelling, inspiring feeling that the enveloping sorrow will inevitably come to an end and fill you with hope and joy.

At over 10 minutes in length is "A Vignette", the longest track on the album and perhaps also the heaviest. The track begins with a heavy, slow, doomy riff, which is repeated through a different note throughout. The riff is accompanied by a gradual yet powerfully effective drumming pattern, as well as weighty bass lines, which keep the overall rhythm at a steady pace. However, the track does eventually build up and by the end has a rather calming mid-tempo outro, although this outro does tend to run its course and duration.

Jenny Newton's vocals are particularly striking. Although they tend to be mostly one-dimensional, and over long periods you'll often find yourself in a dreary state of mind, they fit perfectly well into the album's doomy setting. Her vocal style is what I would describe as the pinnacle of female-fronted doom; there are very few vocalists that can pull off such an authentic and passionate approach.

All in all, A Hollow Full of Hope is an album that you can genuinely say lives up to its meaningful title. On the one hand, if you're feeling particularly happy about yourself or situation in life, this could well put a damper on your mood. But on the other hand, if you're feeling down, this album could just lighten your mood. I guess, at the end of the day, that's what doom metal is really all about.