DAY OF MOURNING: Discography

When posted back in 2008, I initially had this post focused on the Your Future's End album (by far the band's finest work). With the somewhat recent re-issue on A389 Records, however, I decided to revamp the post into a discography (minus the obviously still in press EP). Some of the following information is probably inaccurate, but information on this band is relatively hard to come by. Feel free to post comments with corrections.

In a similar manner to A Death For Every Sin's monumental EP, Day Of Mourning played a style of driving, evil, mid-paced, Cleveland-inspired hardcore. However, unlike their Canadian counterparts, Day Of Mourning actually progressed with their creativity and awesomeness throughout their career. Taking influence at any given time from All Out War, Merauder, Integrity, Ringworm, Agnostic Front, Entombed and others of the like ... Day Of Mourning carefully crafted one of the more evil personas amongst hardcore at the time.

Their debut offering was a demo in 1998 entitled Guilty Innocence Roaming. With two out of six tracks being covers of Cleveland hardcore bands of the past, the band wasn't exactly hiding their cards as to where their influences came from. They apparently pressed this multiple times for different tours until the release of their Reborn As The Enemy debut was available through the efforts of Canadian label, Upheaval Records. Relying on the distribution of a smaller Canadian label at the time, the album didn't receive much fanfare down here in the states. Still to this day, the only copy of this album I have ever seen was in Jamey Jasta's distro he would bring with him back in 2000. I obviously and thankfully bought that copy.

Not long after the release of this epic full length, the band put out a split with Hardtime entitled “Penitence Towards The False Prophet” thanks to the efforts of yet another Canadian label, the Sounds Of Revolution. This effort would feature two offerings from their debut, Guilty Innocence Roaming demo: a song entitled Eroding Edict and a cover of Integrity's "Kingdom Of Heaven". While the album had considerably better distribution in the US with this album, the band was still shrouded in obscurity for the most part.

In May of 1999 the band would lay down three songs for a split with Red Sky from Edinboro, PA. Two originals and a cover of Agnostic Front's Eliminator. Presumably this is around the same time that the band would record an unreleased EP which contains some of my favorite Day Of Mourning material, to be honest. While one track would be featured on the West Coast Worldwide compilation put out by Mikey Hood ... the rest of the songs are otherwise unreleased to the extent of my knowledge. There is a bangin' cover of Earth AD (probably better than Earth Crisis') as well as a re-recording of Breathe Life Into A Dying Day ... but the other three songs were original tracks that had no release otherwise.

It would be only a month later in June of 1999 that the band would enter the infamous Mars Studio in the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio to lay down their second full length entitled Your Future's End. It finally seemed as though they were about to break free of the constraints that being a Canadian band inherently had at the time. Featuring guest vocals on this offering from both Dwid of Integrity and James of Ringworm, the album was surely to attract the attention of the hardcore world at large. Alas this was not the case.

For whatever reason, the full length was split into a 6 song EP (that would eventually become Your Future's End) and a 5 song split with Clenched Fist out of Memphis, TN. Rumor has it that the split was initially supposed to also include Pitboss 2000 and Empire Falls as it was supposed to be released by Use Your Head Records. For whatever reason, this was not the case and the split forged ahead with only the offerings from Clenched Fist and Day Of Mourning. While the release is a solid offering from Day Of Mourning, the songs would have better served as the final stamp of proof that the band was capable of writing a full length every bit as vital as any of the US bands playing heavy hardcore at the time.

Unfortunately for the band at the time, the distribution capabilities of the label were still as big of a hindrance as the US Border presumably was. To my knowledge, the band only made several treks into the US throughout the existence of their band. I'm not sure what eventually dissolved the band, but the band went out without any type of bang ... at least here in the states.

According to the write-up that can be found HERE, "at the time the band broke up in 2001, they were working on their third album to be titled “Onwards to Tragedy and Contempt” as well as a split with Leval Blessing." Unfortunately, we never had the chance to hear those.

So here it is ... the entire Day Of Mourning discography ... minus, of course, their best material ... Your Future's End ... which is still readily available for purchase at A389 Records.


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