With any memoir, I think it's first important to establish if this is something anyone would enjoy or is it something that is primarily for fans of the author. Mark Morton's Desolation, is more of the latter. I have been a Lamb of God fan for a very long time and requested an ARC as soon as I knew it was a possibility. I enjoyed reading about Mark's history with music and stories from his life that I didn't know before. He is an incredible songwriter and hearing how some of my favorite songs of all time (Descending tops the list) came to be was such a treat. I also think there are some shining, devastating, beautiful chapters that really worked for me and would absolutely resonate with people who aren't necessarily fans of Mark/Lamb of God.

I think where this really let me down, especially in the first two-thirds was the writing itself. The structure of each chapter starts with a song that is influential to Mark and an anecdote that explains why it's influential. These feel connected to the chapters that follow but sometimes it felt a bit redundant. A few times I thought to myself "did I already read this?" but it was because it was because the same story was at the beginning of the chapter. There were other repetitive sentences and themes that took me out of the book a bit.

Overall, if you're a fan, I think you'll get something out of this but wouldn't necessarily recommend outside of the fan base.

Really good metal memoir. I do think the first half could have been trimmed, and I think including bits of actual memoir in the epigraphs was a bit weird because it was also mixed in with random music information. Not very organic.

But the second half of the memoir and everything to do with Lamb of God was fantastic.

Interesting book.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.