🎶 Marianas Rest
🌎 Kotka, Finland
📀 The Bereaved
® Noble Demon
📅 16/01/2026

The really active Melodic Doom Metallers MARIANAS REST return with another full length album, their fifth in a period of ten years and they seem more mature and settled than ever.

“The Bereaved” is a clearly thematic album that speaks of loss, mourning and melancholy, focusing not only on the one who died but on those who were left behind. From the first song, “Thank You For The Dance”, the listener dives into the heavy atmosphere that governs most of the album as well as the very emotionally charged lyrics.

No Words left to speak

Just a moment to keep

The last trip we will ever make

The next song is one of the most beautiful and catchy songs of the album, “Rat in the Wall”, which is equally charged and quite melodic.

Like a rat in the wall

You run inside my skin

I can feel you

Crawling to break free

In “Divided” the vocals stand out as they emit a desperation that is enhanced by the depth given by the keyboard with the mourner seeking one more moment with the one who is gone. Perhaps the strongest lyrics on the entire album…

I would give it all away

To hear one more lie

To have you whisper

Everything will be alright

The slow tempo of “Again into the night” builds an almost suffocating atmosphere that is full of pessimism and emphasizes the psychological and emotional fatigue of the mourner.

But everything has been seen, said, done and put into use

And I grow tired, please let me have my rest

Half  along the way, we find ourselves psychologically exhausted and the particularly melodic song, “Burden” enhance those feelings even more. This is a song full of contrasts with the combination of clean and growl vocals as well as the keyboard parts completing the excellent riffing.

You carried me all the way here

Now it’s my time to take you away

Tired yet untarnished

That is how I’ll remember you

In the easy-to-remember “Diamonds in the Rough”, the tempo rise, the melody becomes more lively and the chorus is one of those that can be sung at a concert by the audience. We could say that there is also a more optimistic feeling, emphasizing the fact that someone does not really die as long as there are people who remember them.

Somebody wise once said

You’ll stay alive as long as there is

Someone to reminisce what we went through

In this lifelong mess

This optimistic note is not sustained for long as it follows the slow-burning and extremely doomy “Pity The Living” which poses the selfish but honest question of who is ultimately to be pitied the most. The one who dies or the one who is left behind with the pain of loss that never eases?

Pity the living,

envy the dead

Close your mind and rest those eyes

Lie easy, my dear friend

This battle has gone long and far enough

The Melodic Death element returns strongly in “Goodbyes and Good Intentions” in one of the songs that helps give the album a welcome musical variety. However, the song’s lyrics deal with one of the worst feelings one has when losing a loved one. The feeling of the incomplete and all those “I love you” that were never said.

Of everything ever to fell upon me

Now the worst are these little things

All the intentions, plans left on table

Songs unsung, goodbyes never told

The instrumental “Tyhja” with its strong progressive elements serves as a deep, heavy breath before the closing of “The Bereaved” with the most beautiful song of the album, “The Colour of you” which we could say encompasses all those elements that the previous nine bring to light. Its 7 and a half minutes constitute a musical journey with progressive, death and melodic elements alternating and the lyrics deeply moving.

You were my sea

Ocean that carried me

As world began to sink

As Finns, MARIANAS REST know how to create the right atmosphere. There is a group of bands from this country such as AEONIAN SORROW, SWALLOW THE SUN, KAUNIS KUOLEMATON etc. who have created their own subgenre for this particular type of Metal. “The Bereaved” is impossible not to touch anyone who has experienced loss, no matter what stage they are in at the given moment they hear it. Also, it is one of the albums where the study of the lyrics really makes sense since they come out straight from the artists’ souls.

★ 9/10
✍🏻 Kostas Boudoukos