Every week, when it’s up to order new promos, always the same question arises: which ones of the unknowns I should take? It’s like a kinder surprise egg, you never know what you get (and inet investigations are boring, isn’t it? ;)). However, sometimes you really discover great tunes (too seldom actually) and sometimes you downright get bullshit (not so often as you might think now). Mostly you just get average fare.

While reading the info-sheet to the INBORN SUFFERING record entitled Wordless Hope I had to accept the fact that I again have to deal with a French band. Due to wretched experiences a high degree of skepticism is indicated. But every record deserves its chance and… I was positively surprised.
This six-head-piece (that also changed the singer in the meantime) doesn’t produce the millionth unnecessary symphonic black metal massacre I expected. No! On their debut album Wordless Hope these Frenchmen serve songs that heavily remind me of Morgion’s Solinari: doomy, partly epical compositions with much variety and atmosphere that – despite of all great sound pictures – evoke a conglomerate of blackness behind the listener’s eyes. The affinity to Morgion and also older My Dying Bride and Anathema is indeed astonishing. Let’s face it: better a well-done copy than bad self-creation, especially, since the Americans are not a band that serves as source of inspiration. But it’s also not to conceal that INBORN SUFFERING lack of that last grain to reach the same level as mentioned bands.

The first song This Is Who We Are anyway runs over 11 minutes and is an interplay of quiet and loud passages, clean and soulful vocals and extreme growls, as well as nice guitar hooks and occasional atmospheric keyboard and piano parts one can take exemplarily for the main style of INBORN SUFFERING. Sometimes strings get used in the background (as in The Agony Within) but first always a mix of elegiac doom with death metal influences reigns. With Monolith and the heavy Stygian Darkness INBORN SUFFERING offer quite some strong material.

After all the second mega opus Thorn Of Deceit gets the black metal paint, appearing as short but rough blast attacks, before The Affliction Corridor closes Wordless Hope as folkloristic-like instrumental.
Altogether, mostly a well-done record I thoroughly can recommend to all fans of this genre. New ideas or even musical Novelle Cuisine one won’t find, but competent arranged fare. And that’s worthwhile 7.5 points.