“Pain Remains” is the senior album of the New Jersey deathcore, Lorna Shore, who formed in 2009. “Pain Remains” is the band’s first album with their new singer, Will Ramos, after his joining in 2020. “Pain Remains” released in 2022 through Century Media Records.
“Pain Remains” follows up on a lot of the excellent songwriting from Will Ramos from 2021’s “…And I Return to Nothingness.” Although not comparable with the short EP of three single tracks, “Pain Remains” does everything better in every way. From the epic orchestral opening of the first track, “Welcome Back, O’ Sleeping Dreamer,” the listener can tell that it’s going to be an absolute ride, an example of deathcore at its best.
The album’s entire track list is perfect, whether it be the meaningful lyrics, or the excellent production from Josh Schroeder, who also produced the band’s first EP with Ramos. “Pain Remains” is a concept-album, essentially meaning this is a book in music form. Throughout the track list, the point of view from which the album is written is a being who realizes the power of their mind, how lucid dreaming can make one essentially the god of their own world.
When it comes to this album, I was highly looking forward to it, as I absolutely loved “…And I Return to Nothingness,” so this album was one of my most-anticipated albums of 2022. My favorite tracks of this album have to be the last three, which is one song in total, but they’re divided into three parts, entitled “Pain Remains I, Pain Remains II, and Pain Remains III.” The three tracks fade perfectly into one-another, and follow the narrator realizing the folly of their dream-world, realizing all the things they built in the end mean nothing, as it’s all part of a dream; it’s essentially the narrator cursing the world and the way it is.
From front to back, “Pain Remains” is an excellent, genre-defining album. This is an album that will be talked about for years to come, which is why I give this album, with confidence, a 5/5.
