News: Abel Gomez of Lament Has Passed Away
With sadness, and certainly with more than a little shock, I heard the news of the passing of Abel Gomez, the frontman and longest-running member of the Mexican death metal legends, Lament. The announcement can be found on the band’s Facebook page.
It was not long ago, just last year in fact, when I got to interview Abel. As anyone who may have, even in passing, checked out my writing here at Heaven’s Metal knows, I’m a big fan of Lament. For me, it was a tremendous, and humbling, privilege to be able to email back and forth with Abel. Though I did not know him well, he impressed me as someone very driven by his artistic vision, but most of all, by his dedication to and love of Jesus Christ. It was the overarching theme that I saw weaving its way through his words.
With his passing, the Christian metal world in particular loses one of its most visionary artists. No one sounded quite like Lament. Mexico’s finest were a progressive death metal band like no other, constantly shifting from album to album and exploring different stylistic approaches, yet always sounding like Lament. Tears of a Leper remains an absolute classic of the death metal genre, a seamless mix of elegant acoustic passages with grinding brutality, and Through the Reflection is still an all-time personal favourite record of mine when it comes to Christian death metal.
A final album from the band is, from what I can tell, still possibly set to release at some point in the future. Entitled Determination, it is being touted as a return-to-form style record that goes back to the older sounds of the band. According to Del Otro Lado Metal, the album will also feature guest vocal work from the band’s original (and most brutal) vocalist, Marco Perez.
More information concerning this sad news can be found on the band’s Facebook page.
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