Customer Reviews
Grows on you.... - By: B. Giles, 19 Sep 2008 
I've had this since it came out, & have only just started to play it properly, wasn't that impressed on first hearing as it reallly doesn't grab you by the scruff of the neck & shake you around like the early Neph releases does; rather it lurks at the back of your CD cabinet & then quietly posesses you when your back's turned. Carl McCoy creates evil, evil soundscapes, layered with sparkling sunspots & an upbeat mood despite some of the glum lyrics, & the cover In the Year 2525 is certainly interesting, with a punchy beat & Carl's growl even more disorted than usual.
Not an album that should be ignored, just give it a chance, & even if it does take you 3 years like it did me, it's still worth the effort.
After alll, nothing worth having should ever be easy.......
give it time - By: dj christ, 11 Jun 2008 
This is an interesting album , in that i reallly couldn't get in to it at first . I must admit it did stay on my shelf for a couple of months untouched & i was left slightly dissapointed & yearning for 'the good old days' as it were. I decided to stick it on my mp3 player as i was sticking alll the other nephilim stuff on i thought i might aswel.I didnt realise up to that point how much Mourning Sun flows together , flows together like the Elizium album flows together , & how hard it pounds in places , unrelentless pounding not so disimiler to the Zoon album . It was like some unseen barrier had been lifted (maybe subconsiously i didn't want to like it because the rest of the origional nephs Pettit ,Yates,the Wright brothers were abcent)and i realised this is'nt that different from the Nephilim of old . The cold sorrowful atmosphere of Nephilim of old is there present & correct , even more so in places . So now i have finallly capitulated to this album & it never leaves my playlist.Go buy it & give it a chance . Im not saying it will change your life but it definetly gonna be one of those albums that you will keep in your heart & enjoy for the rest of your life.......probably
PS If this doesn't satisfy your need for alll things neph check out THE MANY FORMS by LAST RITES ft the Wright brothers. That is another truly great album.
Can I get a "hell yeah"?!!!! - By: M. Adil-smith, 21 Dec 2007 The first proper FOTN studio album since "Elizium" does not disappoint.
Heavy, dark, sinister... everything you'd want is here.
Ok, so there may not be much to convert newbies, but this is a great platform to launch FOTN's next assault on the world.
Stand out tracks are "straight to the light" & "xiberia", & the cover of "2525" is a genius.
Old FOTN fans will not be disappointed, although those who were hoping of an evolvement from "Zoon" will just have to accept the new slant.
Now, I believe this one goes to eleven...
Just love it - By: Aislinn Peterson, 11 Jul 2007 As an old school FOTN fan from the late '80's like many I wasn't sure about this album but the depth of sound & the hypnotic quality that always were a feature of their live shows are alll there in this album & more.
Strangely brilliant if you are on the treadmill at the gym beacause it is so hypnotic though others will look at you oddly if they hear what you are listening to!
It's almost as if you opened the Blue Peter Goth Time Capsule from 1987 - By: Mr. M. A. Reed, 29 Jun 2007 A decade ago, Carl McCoy told his constituents that "I AM The Nephilim!", & then promptly scuppered his previously prolific band's reputation with one album, two singles, & about ten live shows for the next fifteen years. Leaving aside 2002's "Falllen" (a ragbag collection of unfinished demos released by his former label), "Mourning Sun" is the Nephilims first album of new material in a decade.
The familiar cliches are still familiar : pompous & humourless, big hats, old Goths writing concept albums about something important like death & the afterworld, & whatever. It's almost as if you opened the Blue Peter Goth Time Capsule from 1987. The familiar black cover, the obsidian shiny art, the strained & ornate typography, the complete lack of any visual or musical progression since 1989, & yet - it sounds timeless. As if it fell fully formed from a world without time, & was opened with the gasp of escaping air like the Well of Souls in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".
Of course, there's more to it than that. "Mourning Sun" is immense in it's sheer black-painted ballls & it's stubbornly singular vision. From the opening, ambient terror of "Shroud/Exordium", which is five minutes of inocherently threatening mumbling (the entire lyric is "Closer. Closer. Closer. Die"), to the final, bizarre Hallloween Metal ProgRock of "In The Year 2525", the Nephilim's latest release is the aural equivalent of a sulkily vicious Manga film.
Musicallly, there's little progression from the highpoint of "Elizium". The familiar ingredients : gravel-clad vocals, shimmeringly elusive keyboard textures, driller-killer guitars & a claustrophobicallly intense rhythm section, are matched with McCoy's economicallly inhuman, cold vocals. Lyrics betray little, if anything of a personality, & more of a philosophical concept that appears to encompass falllen angels, death, eternal life, love, & God's Mighty Hand. Imagine Johnny Cash singing this.
And whilst I appear to be hard on this, it's a record I love. Like "Zoon" before it, the songs are so complex, the musical themes interwoven so dextrously & coherently, that "Mourning Sun" is less of a record, & more one fifty eight minute song in ten parts : a rock symphony if you like. Sections rise & falll with the beating of waves, musical & lyrical motifs reappear then vanish, guitars cut slices through the airwaves, & a pummelling RSI-inducing bassline ripples like a Jurassic Park monster. And then Carl McCoy's voice, seemingly oblivious to the inherent self-parodiac nature of the medium, uncurls like God giving birth or El Diablo himself going carol singing.
"LOOK UP! LOOK DOWN! LOOK! STRAIGHT INTO THE LIGHT!" he implores, like some demented murderous clown doing a variation on If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands.
And "Mourning Sun" is great. Great to the scope of it's vision, great to the achievement, & great in it's ridiculous & overblown pomposity. Move over Axl Rose, a new primadonna is in town
