Passion For Sorrow - Rotting Immortality (2014)

It’s not that long when Passion For Sorrow has started invading Prague’s underground music clubs, making local metal fans surprised by its contrastful synergy of death power, gothic beauty and doom sadness.

Despite a “new in town” band, Passion For Sorrow has been immediately recognized and invited to gig with some of the leading local bands like Assessor, Unborn or Nocturnal Pestilence. Recently has also supported the tour of Czech gothic rock legend Greedy Invalid.

The roots of the band’s production are inspired by Scandinavian death metal hailing Dark Tranquility, In Flames, Amon Amarth or Opeth. In contradiction to the death metal vocal barking and heavy riffing, there’s simultaneously spice of emotional melodies supported by classical orchestra instruments.

All this is reflected on band’s demo recording, which contains four songs telling stories of doomed love, melancholy, horror and despair with a bit of “light in the tunnel”. Produced and engineered by the band’s front man Fedor Furnadžiev (ex Et Moriemur) in 2009, the demo gathered some nice reviews:

“Where sorrow and anger meet” - 77%, hells_unicorn at metal-archives.com

“PASSION FOR SORROW doesn’t play that 100 times heard” – 9/10, Mao Kimlièka at Slovak Speed of Light e-zine

"After acquaint with the first release of Passion For Sorrow, there are no doubts that guys knows how to write a good quality song“ – 7/10, Björn Backes at German PowerMetal.de e-zine

"By the power of melody with connection to guitar work, there is a band in the former federation (Czechoslovakia) which have practically no competition“ – unrated, Tamara Sawicka at Czech Paøát magazine

Passion For Sorrow was based in 2008 as a home recorded hobby project in Prague, Czech Republic. It’s creator Fedor has started it when he moved out from home country (Slovakia) towards post-gradual professional career. He had to sacrifice his home death/doom band Alone In The Dark, which was basically the predecessor of Passion For Sorrow.

At the new place Fedor has decided to not give up with music but didn’t know any musicians willing to form a band. So he has started on his own. With a very basic equipment (POD Studio) he managed to record the first version of the project’s demo.

Later there were intentions to form a band but it was always a problem to find the right people. Instead, Fedor have joined doom metal band Et Moriemur and it became his main musical focus for next few years. Regardless some more trials and short cooperation with former members of Alone In The Dark, project was more less dead.

Restart came in 2012 as finally the right people are found – Ján Hagyari (drums), Miroslav Kuák (lead guitar), Robert Pilch (bass) and Pavel Medonos (keboards). After short preparation, new crew kicks-in to Prague’s underground music clubs. A nameless band “steals” audience of headliners at many events by it’s interesting and unique mixture of heavy stuff and catchy melodies. “Basically it’s all a straight line barrage of catchiness that somehow manages to embody death metal yet otherwise sound almost nothing like it“ says hells_unicorn in his review.

The band refreshed the headline few more in times. In 2012 Medouch has left, after that the band uses keyboards from playback. In 2013 guest star David Viktorin (Unborn, Post Mortem) replaces temporary Mirek until new guitarist Michal “Høíbek” Peths was found. At the same time gig activities were decreased in order to finish material for the upcoming first full-length album.

In January 2014 band hits Mathlab Recording Studio in Italy to record it’s debut album “Rotting Immortality”. In the album, Passion For Sorrow presents their own version of how the living death classics has started, taking us to the time before the death infection has taken over the world as we know it from the movies. The story is rather filled with mysticism, occultism and gothic romance then sci-fi. The main character is an alchemist searching for eternal life.

He uses dangerous secrets of the dark – an ancient heretic script connected to unknown evil. He is so possessed by immortality that he sacrifices his love and curse their unborn child in believe that it will be the first immortal. In fact the child will return back from death as a rotting walking corpse infecting the others…

Band decided to have female vocal featured in Rotting Immortality. That’s why singer Michaela Hagyari joins and completes the headline in 2014.

01. Secrets Of The Dark
02. The Phantom
03. Dark Seed
04. Lost
05. My Inspiration
06. World At The Abyss
07. Dying
08. The Day Death Left The Grave
09. Rotting Immortality
Total playing time: 53:25

Fedor Furnadžiev - guitars, vocals
Michaela Hagyari - female vocals
Robert Pilch - bass, vocals
Michal "Høíbek" Peths - guitars
Jan "Haïo" Hagyari - drums