Album Review: Trails of Anguish – Scathed Gaping Misery (Hessian Firm)

On May 17th, 2024, Hessian Firm will release ‘Scathed Gaping Misery’, a compilation of the only two EPs ever released from defunct Canadian black metal duo Trails of Anguish. The compilation consists of all tracks from 2001’s ‘Relentless Abhorrence of Misery’s Grievance’ and 2003’s ‘Scarred Memento’.

As short-lived as their existence might have been, the long-term impact of Trails of Anguish continues to be felt today, and the appreciation for the defunct band’s black metal will only grow deeper with the release of this compilation album. Combining two EPs worth of music, resulting in a ten-track album of raw, hateful, rancorous, and hellish sounding black metal.

However, and very interestingly, this not all that Trails of Anguish offered, and their forward-thinking use of melody is part of the reason as to why they stood out back in the early noughties. Across the expansive of this collection, there’s way more on offer than just head-caving and skin-crawling horror.

Of course, this is the intricate progressive aspects of the music, and at its core, this is blackened ferocity through and through. The rawness of it gives it a distinctly old-school vibe, but when you consider many bands try to ape this exact style these days, that doesn’t mean a whole lot. What it does mean is that the music has an almost ageless feel to it, difficult to place in one period over another, and as listenable today as it was twenty-plus years ago.

Listenable, provided you have a taste for the sound of hellfire and horror.

Love it, hate it, it doesn’t really matter. After all, it’s not like we’re going to get new music from this band. It’s just a slice of black metal history that Hessian Firm have sought to drag into the light one more time.

Trails of Anguish – Scathed Gaping Misery Track Listing:

1. Beyond Charismatic Sickness
2. The Scythe Of Engrieved Melancholia
3. Laments of Martyrised Innocence
4. Reaping Life’s Frailty
5. …And Desolated Trails Of Anguish
6. Useless (The Final Soliloquy)
7. Haunting
8. Spectral Life Scars
9. Scathed, Gaping Misery
10. Rebirth

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