����� Fans of classic British misery have been waiting for years for this album to finally be reissued. The one and only album from UK band Decomposed, 1993's Hope Finally Died came out of the death metal underground of the early 90s with a sound so slow and depressing that it was matched only by the sound of heavyweights like My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. Hope is also notable for being one of the earliest releases that came out from the early days of Candlelight, released alongside the likes of Enslaved and Emperor, and their slow-motion cemetery metal sure stuck out in the midst of stuff like that. Like many folks, I'd never heard this album until now, as the original release had been out of print for years. It's a solid slab of early 90s doomdeath with all of the crushing heaviness and despondent atmosphere that marked the best stuff in that vein, though, with some proggy quirks that helped to distinguish their music from the other acts that were crawling out of the muck back then, making it one of the more interesting albums of its kind from that era. Considered by some to be a lost classic, Hope Finally Died ended up being the last thing the band put out before breaking up not long thereafter, but it's a killer artifact of classic British doomdeath that's ripe for re-discovery and reassessment.

����� It's easy to see how it's gained the cult following it has. On Hope, Decomposed delivered their own morbid take on crawling, funereal death metal, with a set of solidly-constructed songs that combine seriously pulverizing riffage with a dank, dreary atmosphere filled with soul-crushing emotion, lacing that with some occasional unusual guitarwork that keeps this from becoming too predictable. The seven songs of drawn-out, creeping doom are shot through with short bursts of mid-paced deathchug or sudden, blasting speed, the singer's monstrous guttural exhalations drifting over the mostly glacial tempo, adding to the towering, oppressive, death-obsessed mood of this album. Where some of their peers might have slipped into monotonous drudgery, though, Decomposed also brought some slightly proggy touches to this stuff, incorporating some moments of weird dissonance, unusual time signature changes and understated off-kilter riffage into several of those songs that gives their dragged-out dirges of funereal despair a cool, quirky touch. It's all pretty impressive and imposing; while they weren't as genre-defining as My Dying Bride, this stuff definitely stands out in the landscape of early British death/doom, and is highly recommended listening for anyone obsessed with the classic early material of the Peaceville Three. Some of the members would later go on to play in various British stoner rock outfits like End Of Level Boss and Hangnail, but their work with Decomposed is by far my favorite material of theirs.