SORROWFUL ANGELS – Ship In Your Trip

Sorrowful Angels could have been a great tribute band to Paradise Lost in a particular era. This resemblance to the great act of melancholy and gloominess was not conveyed only by the sub-genre of Gothic/Doom Metal but also from the band’s sound production, the material’s approach and even the utmost likeness to the old vocal line. Nick Holmes would be proud to know that he has a true successor and he comes in the figure of Kostas Katikos.

Ten years after their formation, the Greek/Polish Dark, Gothic and Doom Metal act, Sorrowful Angels, release their first album Ship In Your Trip as a gift of pain and suffering which marks the band’s progress through this decade of time. While stretching their darkened roots into the Metal world, beside the close similarity to Paradise Lost, several more areas are covered from the worlds or Rock and Electro.

It is very easy to point out, from this band’s latest album that Paradise Lost are almost their sole influence when it comes to the joining of Gothic and Doom Metal. To be more accurate, Sorrowful Angels flows between Paradise Lost’s era of Believe In Nothing until the partial force of 2007’s In Requiem.

Ship In Your Trip is all but driven by the pleasant, grey colored, yet heavy and morbid, sound manufacture of the British giants and moreover, matching similar aspects that were relatively frequent in Paradise Lost’s mentioned albums.

Great tracks abound such as “Second Life” , “I’m Home” , “Ship In Your Trip” and “Red Sunrise”, a track that after a close listen will be recognized as a somewhat different version to Paradise Lost’s “Erase” from the Sign Of Life album. There are a couple of elements that were added by Sorrowful Angels that, in a way, fractionally distinguish them from Paradise Lost. For instance the emotional solos are rather more diverse than the gloomy leading touches of Macintosh and also unique. Second are the vocals, although very similar to his British “father”, Katikos, with some help from his guitarist Dion Christodoulatos who probably added the tiny growl passages (or vice versa), shows great signs of being a great vocalist suitable to the genre. He was also able to stretch his voice into areas that eventually took him away from Holmes’ pattern and came closer to veins of Sisters Of Mercy, Katatonia, late era Sentenced and even some of the late vocals of James Hetfield of Metallica.

In conclusion, Ship In Your Trip is a very fluent album and an easy one to comprehend. In a way, the songs are quite catchy for this type of genre and it seems that the band slightly took that mad step through the inner marketing of MTV “Metal”, a type of “Metal” that is a lot of fun at first but after a while of recycling, it’s another dull moment. Sorrowful Angels made a bit of a difference while conducting material that is uncommon to this sort of depressive music, yet they were able to make their first offering pretty enjoyable.

Other Highlights: “How To Lose A Star” , “Suicidal Manners” and “A Long Stay”.