Lorna Shore Pain Remains (CD)

(Century Media Records) 10 tracks, digipack

For Lorna Shore, 2020 was nothing less than a reckoning - in a career built on challenges, change and a single-minded vision.

For the New Jersey quintet, 2020 meant the pandemic and canceled tours. The following year presented the band with a major creative challenge in the form of the song "To the Hellfire" from their acclaimed "...And I Return to Nothingness" EP. And yet with "Pain Remains" they've upped their sonic game, an album that not only pulls together everything Lorna Shore have hinted at, but surpasses it - brutally and magnificently. "It feels like a rebirth of everything for us - the energy, the band, the morale," says drummer Austin Archey.

"Pain Remains" is the sound of a band that has refined its sound and identity. From the opening choral chants and orchestration (composed by guitarist Andrew O'Connor) of "Welcome Back, O' Sleeping Dreamer" straight into the labyrinth of musical twists, technical details and raw emotion at the core of tracks like "Sun Eater" or "Soulless Existence" and culminating in the "Pain Remains" trilogy, Lorna Shore have woven a sprawling document of ambition, soul and skill that few can match.

It is also the sound of Lorna Shore that breaks free from any sort of categorization and establishes themselves as a great extreme metal band. With 'Pain Remains', Lorna Shore have truly arrived. "This has been the idea and the vision for the band for years," says Adam. "We never wanted to be limited or fulfill anyone's expectations of what we have to be."