The self-titled debut from these Parisian sourpusses wasn't what I was expecting at first when that album had come in; I'd just started carrying the Total Rust label and thought that the label specialized in straightforward extreme doom, but here was this album of tortured, depressive doominess that sounded more like a cross between the surreal suicidal dread of Silencer and Xasthur, and the atmospheric downer doom of Deinonychus and early Katatonia, and it ruled. Mourning Dawn became one of my favorite bands on the label, actually. Now we've got the second full length from 'em, the eight song For The Fallen, and not a whole lot has changed, musically. The music is still an incredibly bleak and sorrowful brand of doomy black metal, with layered tremolo riffs and slow, languid melodies drowned in sadness strewn across the mostly loping mid-tempo dirges that only occasionally lurch into faster blastbeat-ridden sections or stretches of hopeless glacial doom. The songs are fronted by a mix of deep death metal grunting and higher register shrieks that almost reach the piercing heights of Silencer or Bethlehem (this is just one of several albums that came in this week that have that weird, impossibly anguished and high-pitched black shriek, for some reason). A kindred soul makes a guest appearance on the track "The Rivers Flow", which has Jonathan Th�ry (Funeralium/Bethlehem/Ataraxie) contributing his damned howl to the song's blackened funeral crawl, and "Dead Youth" stands out with it's apocalyptic, war-themed imagery and complex riff arrangements that are shaded by solemn liturgical choirs. Bethlehem, Nortt and Deinonychus fans will have another album to listen to while contemplating the futility of living, but anyone into depressive doom and melancholy black metal should give this (and their first album) a listen, too.