Lamented Souls were doomed from the outset of their now 16-year long career. Disagreements on whether to play death, black or doom metal, and a bass player more concerned with American tractors than playing his bass were only a few of the obstacles the Kolbotn quartet faced during their formative years. The fact that they couldn’t agree on who were to play what and who would be the singer only clouded their vision furthermore, and it’s no wonder their debut demo ‘Soulstorm’ wasn’t the groundbreaking piece of art they had hoped for. Years of dormancy followed with the usual college breaks for 3 quarters of the band and a short-lived military stint for the fourth. That they actually managed to regroup and write a consistent batch of songs for their 1995 demo (imaginatively named ‘Demo 1995’) remains a mystery to this day. By then, the bass player had become more of a spiritual presence than a bloke with a bass, and the drummer had discovered he had a knack for singing. The tape was spread in a few hundred copies in the unsuspecting underground, and appraisals miraculously occurred. By 1996, they even had interest from a small label and plans for a split 10” were made. However, recording conditions more at home in the 1900s and a True Maniac of an engineer, didn’t prevent the two songs from being buried deep in the ground far, far away. By this time a three-piece, the band didn’t know how to sort out their line-up problems. The supposed guitar-player had to play the drums and the singer couldn’t handle playing two guitars and singing at the same time, the talentless brat. Thus, they searched the gutter and managed to find a drumming lowlife, who was almost up for the job. A tad restless for a doom band maybe, but “what the heck”, they thought and went about their business. Which was to record their debut album for another small label. When it became apparent in the mixing stages of the recording, that no contract had ever been signed, and the label showed a sudden lack of interest, the sessions (which were disastrous in a whole lot of ways) were stopped and the band had to pay for the half-completed album out of their own pocket. Naturally, Lamented Souls, who were quickly turning into just that whenever mention of the band came up, put the project on ice and focused on other bands for several years, with far greater success. The unfinished album became a burden, a jinx, an albatross of frustration and disappointment, and when the drummer suddenly decided he wanted to be a record label manager in the year 2002, temptation became too strong to resist, the result being the ‘Essence of Wounds’ 7”EP. Suddenly the Souls started rehearsing and gigging and new material started to erm, materialize. Considering the usual diligence of this bunch, a debut album proper wasn’t exactly looming on the horizon just yet though, so having gotten rid of nearly 500 copies of the EP, the drummer/label hotshot thought, “hey, what about a cd of all the stuff we’ve done so far? Then we might be able to concentrate on writing some fresh material and lay these old tunes to rest?”. After much bribing, yelling and bitching, the others agreed. And the rest, as they say, is misery.
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