product: Red Mourning - Under Punishment's Tree

release date: 14.02.2018

label: Bad Reputation

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RED MOURNING was born in 2008 to craft a unique kind of metal, full of blues feeling and hardcore grit. An honest and different groove, spiked with blues harp, slide-guitar and gospel harmonies.

Now the four-piece band is back with “Under Punishment’s Tree”, their

natural-sounding 4th album, produced by Francis Caste.

An inexorable sonic escape into sweaty madness and bright shining pain.

RED was the MOURNING color of the Delta slaves who brought the blues

into this world...100 years later, RED MOURNING plays a unique kind of METAL, full of SLIDE-GUITAR BLUES and NO-SHIT HARDCORE.

RED MOURNING has toured France (incl. HELLFEST) Belgium, Germany, Spain extensively, and is now back for more!

Red Mourning was born in Paris (France) in 2003, when pure luck brought four unlikely metalheads together. They quickly realized they saw music the same way. Whatever they played was going to be sincere, innovative, and most of all, a way to let the accumulated trauma of their lives explode on stage.

Together, they started roaming the Paris underground scene, with its share of fights, and even the occasional gunshot. The self-taught four-piece also hung out as much as possible at local sound-engineering schools, recording demo after demo. These experiments soon yielded a 3-track SP (2004), and a 6-track EP (2006), both today sold-out.

Gradually, the band developed a genuine personality. What was just four chunks of strong musical character was now turning into a well-honed war-machine. Each band-member brings his own personal influences to the mix: hardcore punk, Chicago blues, grunge, old- and new-school death metal… The result is a sound that is unique in today’s metal scene. How many other bands out there combine blast-beats, Blues harp, sludge, and vocal harmonies (to name just the most obvious elements)?

Red Mourning keep pushing their own boundaries, and devote heart and soul to their music. So it was only a matter of time before this creative discipline gave birth to “Time To Go”, the band’s first LP. Its lyrics are introspective and dark, dealing with being unable to escape your past, death, or life’s lack of meaning.

Red Mourning chose Francis Caste, France’s N°1 metal-expert, to handle the record’s production. They spent six long weeks locked up in his Paris studio to record Pregnant With Promises, the second album. The result sounds like it came straight out of a Delta swamp… After all, Red Mourning got their name from the slaves’ mourning color. The sound itself is best described as “moist”, and gives the tracks an oppressive and organic feel. The songs themselves combine groove with violence.The rhythmic foundation is technical without being pretentious. On top of that comes a big fat layer of aggressive and sometimes discordant riffing. Then, the distinctive vocals, with hardcore screams and vocal melodies often backed two, three, or even four times.

Naturally, the Red Mourning sound wouldn’t be complete without a few sharp guitar solos, and some wailing Blues harp. While very unusual in a metal context, the harmonica seems like an obvious choice here.