When talking about metal bands from Iran, it is not exactly musical projects as Silent Path that first pops up in mind. The band, which is a one-man project makes in ambient doom metal with a large dose of black metal atmosphere about it. The result is a fairly interesting but also rather special release out.

From the beginning, you get the depressing hearing steaks, and the atmospheric melancholy style is added in the form of 'Empty Earth', which opens the ballet. Then we jump out into the 'Filth of Mankind', which also reeks of tragedy and despair. One thing that pretty quickly jumps slightly in the ears, production, works full-bodied and full of layers but also easier chaotic and dirty.

One gets the feeling that the main man behind Silent Path, Saman Now aka Count The Efrit, has spent some hours playing with one layer after another in the numbers of hitting the right Trygg end and cold atmosphere which is the password through "mourner Portraits". It is undoubtedly music you have to be in the mood, for it is not exactly Silent Path to be slamming out of the speaker to the New Year celebrations, unless you are ready to someone to kill themselves.

The vocals are mostly smoldering somewhere in the soundstage, and it is reasonable versatile with both the spoken word, hissing black metal, whisper, and often there is also subject to some distortion power over Count The Efrit's outbreak. The keyboard has been a faithful squire in the studio, and there are also many inputs of both sound effects and samples.

It is difficult to highlight some numbers over others, it seems a little like one long trip to get through "mourner Portraits", but songs such as. 'Epic Suicide', 'Gray Dolls From Nowhere', 'Broken Trees' and 'Filth of Mankind' has some fine moments that give a good picture of the faculties Count The Efrit have to create a total depression in musical collages.

Fortunately bares he also his humorous side slightly finisher 'Unwritten Story', where you suddenly hear a short passage with 'Jingle Bells'. Good enough for a slightly more sinister version than usual but still.

"Mourner Portraits" should appeal to fans of funeral doom, ambient doom / black metal and people who generally have a black outlook on life and would like further down in the basement.

An interesting but also very cold and bleak debut album from the ambient metal department in Iran.