In Reality We Suffer

The second album by doomy Swedish metal quintet Abandon is even darker and more foreboding than their 2001 debut, When It Falls Apart. Over the course of 11 tracks (three of them untitled instrumentals that sound like Sigur Rós transmogrified into stoner metal dudes), Abandon plod their way purposefully through over 70 minutes' worth of variations on one key sound, a bass-heavy throb (accented by Mehdi Vafaei's low-register pump organ, which at times -- as on the lengthy centerpiece track, "In Hopelessness Enlightened" -- gives the sound an unexpected resemblance to Nico's gothic early albums, or at least early Deep Purple) under Ingvar Sandgren's grandiose lead guitar lines. Listened to as a whole, In Reality We Suffer has a kind of epic desperation that works for Abandon; taken individually, the songs lose a lot of their scope and power. ~ Stewart Mason