Who said melancholy is passive? Sea of Desperation is the perfect example of “aggressive melancholy” I know it sounds conflicting but you must listen to this Russian one man band, to understand just how deep he gets into a sad atmosphere that sounds like everything is lost just to pick you up, and attack your sorrow like an angry beast with a suicidal desire.

Lefthander is the name of the man behind all the instruments and vocals, he is also involved in two other projects Raxa and Tenochtitlan, both bands with a big doom metal influence; Sea of Desperation also possesses some big doom influence, but in this project Lefthander adds some fast tempo songs and thrash like guitars to create a fast passed mellow doom that sounds like and emotional rollercoaster through the heart of a distressed artist.

The vocal work is nicely split into death growls, screams and deep clean vocals, all three perfectly arranged with the feeling the author wants it’s lyrics to create on the listener; besides this the melodies and rhythms change from slow doom segments to a fast almost melodic death metal like stampedes that help you stay the curse through out the 50 minutes of musical emotions.

You can hear the contrast of emotions right after “Departure” the first and opening track, this song is doom, slow with some fast moments but remains in all its 10 minutes depressing and dark, but in “22nd November” the moral of the album changes dramatically introducing a strong melodic death metal ambiance, pounding drums and a general wake up call for any who was too mellow out from the previous track; and this is exactly the formula that Sea of Desperation is trying and achieving marvelously on this “Spiritual Lonely Pattern” an up and down emotion layered out with nice riffs and well tough lyrics (even thou Lefthander has to make a couple of grammatical corrections on them).

This is a good album, sometimes the doom influences take most of the weight of the production, leaving us with a hunger for those fast mellow death segments that Lefthander plays so nicely, still he manages to balance the record from start to finish and every song has a very interesting mood.