Cwfen - Sorrows

Released by: New Heavy Sounds

Release Date: 30.05.25

Running Time: 41:02

Review by Dark Juan

Score: 793,420,910/10

Good afternoon, dear hearts. Its 12:45 in the afternoon and I have no idea what I have done with my time this morning because I was up early and have absolutely no recollection of what I have been doing. It is in this spirit of not knowing what the fuck I have been up to that I have fired up the pooter (which is miraculously working fine for a change) to talk to you good folk out there.

As I was wandering around with the Smellhounds this morning, I got to wondering… Mrs Dark Juan has embarked on a series of her increasingly unhinged art pieces that represent the anthropomorphic representations of unusual ghosts (the latest one being the Ghost of Past Regrets, and before that the Kipper Queen, representing all the hidden work that women do, based on a TV programme called The Change that she has been watching. Thankfully, Dark Juan is fully domesticated these days and is an able hand with both hoover and skillet and therefore does not have to suffer the wrath of her) and has decamped to her studio, leaving me foolishly without supervision, and I can’t be arsed building the Fujimi F7U-3P Cutlass model I have on the go. Anyway, I was thinking about past regrets and at what point they cease to be regrets and where they cross over just into uncomfortable memories of the past that you immediately consign into the dustbin of history. Now, I am a person that will hold a grudge for decades and evolve costly and Byzantine schemes of revenge with no intention of carrying them out (that was a legal disclaimer for if anyone on my extensive shitlist… ahem… “disappears”) but even I have let things go until they are a mere wisp, a whisper of the pain they once caused. Now they are the ghosts, the fleeting phantasms of past struggles that were overcome and they have lost their power over me…

Which leads nicely into the offering that is currently gracing the estimable Platter of Splatter ™, from Glasgow, Scotland’s own Cwfen. Pronounced “Coven”. The album is called “Sorrows”, and it is their debut. To say this album is a debut recording is staggering. They are polished, poised and fucking scarily confident sounding throughout. It is that rarest of things, a perfect fucking debut. Their music is the sound of all those ghosts coming back to play havoc with the state of your mentation. It is Doomgaze for the most miserable of souls. It is an unrelenting landscape of wet, windblown, featureless dun brown and grey. It is grim, joyless and full of suffering. Which sounds remarkably like Dumfries on a winter night, when the rain is lashing sideways and the sky is dark and iron grey, and the wind blows straight through your bones off the unforgiving and tumultuous sea…

The record opens with ‘Fragment I’ which is just that, a fragment of repeated music until ‘Bodies’ begins, a maudlin, Mogadon slow crawl through the senses that evokes rage and sorrow in equal measure and mixes this with a heartfelt plaintiveness that stands in direct comparison to the music, which is fucking massive. Slow burning riffs and heavily accented guitar licks abound in the manner of early My Dying Bride having been forcibly mated with NAUT, Paradise Lost and the Sisters Of Mercy. Jesus, what a mental image that is. Andrew Eldritch and Gregor Townsend should never be allowed to breed… They have added elements of Black and Doom Metal to the existing Gothic underpinnings and it makes for a savage, yet emotional journey through the darker parts of one’s soul.

‘Reliks’ is a fucking massive tune with a killer hook and a massive riff and chorus which would block out the sun if there was one in the bleak and black universe of Cwfen. Otherwise known as Glasgow. The song just gets more and more and more massive until it is an all-encompassing torrent of sound overwhelming you and pressing you back into your seat, all crushing energy and unstoppable force and relentless, never-ending sadness.

Obviously, for all you humourless bastards out there, when I’m having a pop at Scottish towns, I’m fucking joking, OK? I’m a Sassenach and it is absolutely expected of me. Just like I expect my good brethren and sisters and people of all other genders north of the border to have a go at me for being a pasty-faced Englishman who has pipecleaners for arms and legs and can’t play rugby.  I love Scotland and the people there, to the point I am considering retiring there when I eventually get to retirement age. Which isn’t fucking likely to be honest. Edinburgh and Glasgow (many a fine night was had at King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut) are fantastic cities and Dumfries and Galloway in the summer is jawdroppingly gorgeous.

After ‘Fragment II’ which is a disturbingly distorted bit of almost Gregorian chanting, we return to the ague-sodden universe of Cwfen proper with ‘Penance’. It is again another piece of sorrow-drenched magnificence that tugs at the heartstrings at the same time as eyeing the throat of the listener in a worrying and threatening manner.

And this is what I love about the music of Cwfen. It is leaden and deeply affecting on the emotional level, but it is underpinned by the kind of fury that only grief can drive. It is heavy, pendulous and Doom-laden, emotionally destroyed yet somehow still functioning, depressed, downcast and downtrodden, but with head held high and with an absolute commitment to not being destroyed. Disturbingly, there is hope within the black bleakness of the music of Cwfen, and that’s a fucking difficult thing to achieve when your music is more dour than someone from Aberdeen speaking to an Englishman and being unaccountably sober on a bleak December morning. Yes, if you are a fan of the miserable, abstruse and the challenging, then Cwfen are the band for you. They certainly have resonated with Dark Juan, considering he is a grumpy bastard at the best of times, and they are frankly a fucking essential listen if you are a Brit (or anyone) with a taste for the bizarre and the despondent. Dark Juan officially appoints Cwfen as the soundtrack to his own peculiar psyche. And reserves the right to make as many jokes about Scotland as he likes. Iron Slug are Kentish, and they have had to endure many jokes about needing their big coats and being wussy Southerners (Dark Juan is from West Yorkshire) and Ironrat about being so Yorkshire it hurts by merely muttering “All reet” into their pints when playing with the big boys and girls, so Cwfen aren’t getting off the hook. Let’s score this motherfucker, then, shall we?

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System has had its breath taken away by Cwfen and has no hesitation in scoring “Sorrows” by Cwfen a rather impressive 793,420,910/10 for a record that has charmed, beguiled, upset, depressed and devasted Dark Juan emotionally during his listening. Seriously, Cwfen are fucking AMAZING!!!

TRACKLISTING:

Fragment I

Bodies

Wolfsbane

Reliks

Whispers

Fragment II

Penance

Fragment III

Embers

Rite

LINE-UP:

Mary Thomas Baker - Bass

Rös Ranquinn - Drums

Guy deNuit - Guitars

Agnes Alder - Vocals, Guitars (rhythm)

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