For starters, I love the vocals. One way to really win me over is with good vocals, especially very deep growls which in my opinion fits doom metal better than any other style. There’s a sense of despair and agony that you can’t really duplicate in any other way. Some clean vocal segments are added in occasionally that do very well in complimenting the deep growls adding nice contrast.

Musically, there is a lot of exceptional lead riffing. In fact, Konstantin Drabkin’s guitar work is so elegant at times that it almost sounds like a female voice in the background. Very fluent and graceful. It’s especially noticeable on the first track which is also the title track. Not even a minute into the song, I already knew I was going to like this album. Very depressive and emotional right from the start.

The next two tracks make up the meat of the album in my eyes. Two back to back eleven minute long songs that are clear death doom using plenty of heavy riffing and some faster leads for nice melody. The stronger of the two is the second one or the third track overall, “In My Tomb.” The clean vocals are introduced here and the song itself seems to have much more emotion to it. It even speeds up a little giving Drabkin a chance to display that graceful riffing in a different mood.

Lyrically, “Memorial to Suffering” is expectedly centered on emotional pain, loss and despair. I can’t make out the cover very well. It might just be that this is a promotional copy and the final version will be in full color, I don’t know.

Maybe the most impressive part about this album is that I am to believe that it was originally recorded about ten years ago as a demo and has only recently been unearthed, remastered and distributed. Very good work that has aged extremely well. I think Painful Memories has a good future ahead of them and I for one will be keeping my eye out for coming releases.