Granted, when it was released in 1988, Mournful Cries had a damn near impossible task in following 1986’s Born too Late, but no matter how you want to look at it, the two are very different records. The eye-catching bright pink of the earlier album cover is replaced by a grand dragon unfolding its wings, guitarist Dave Chandler shows a budding interest in getting on the mic, and instead of the inward-looking judgments of “I was born too late/And I’ll never be like you,” songs like “Dragon Time” and “Shooting Gallery” turned their eye outward, storytelling rather than describing. Maybe that’s simplifying it — certainly there were tracks on Born too Late that examined the world around them and told stories (“The War Starter,” to an extent) — but Mournful Cries wound up with a vibe much changed from its predecessor for coming only two years later.

It was the second of three full-lengths (the Thirsty and Miserable EP arrived directly after Born too Late, in 1987) in Scott “Wino” Weinrich‘s first tenure as the band’s vocalist, and with Born too Late on one side and 1990’s V on the other, Mournful Cries is very much the middle child. Vitus was moving away from the simplicity at root in their approach, and the songs were less grounded musically and lyrically as a result. “Dragon Time” is a good example of this — what did Vitus know about a medieval thematic? — but even if it or “The Troll” were intended as metaphors, the simple fact that metaphor was used at all was a step forward, though again, “The War Starter” touched on some of that idea without going quite as far. V would combine both approaches successfully, resulting in landmark Vitus cuts like “I Bleed Black” and “Angry Man,” but Mournful Cries brought elements at work in the band’s sound to the fore that never were there before and never were there again in quite the same way.

I don’t think Mournful Cries gets the kind of acclaim as Born too Late or V, and part of that is down to the lack of an outsider-epic like “Born too Late” or “Angry Man” — “The Troll” is probably as close as the LP gets, and Vitus still play the song live — but it’s got its place in the Saint Vitus canon and for both how it relates to the rest of the discography and what it has to offer on its own level, it’s easily worth another listen.

Please enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:

Saint Vitus, Mournful Cries (1988)