display message during kernel & initrd loading?

[Felix Miata]

With legacy Grub, messages appeared onscreen to indicate what was happening
after making a selection from its menu, first for loading the kernel, then
for loading the initrd.

[code]
title openSUSE on HD0,12
    root (hd0,12)
    pause Press any key to load kernel
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz showopts root=LABEL=mylabel noresume consoleblank=0
    pause post-kernel, pre-initrd, Press any key to load initrd
    initrd /boot/initrd
    pause post-initrd, Press any key to finish booting
[/code]

In legacy Grub, above is valid. Pausing between the two operations helps one
estimate loading times of today's relative giant kernels and initrds that
take can considerable time to load on older hardware. I'm having no luck
finding an equivalent for Grub2, or to even just to display some message
to indicate they are loading without any pausing, instead of just a black
screen from having made a selection until kernel messages begin to appear.
The concepts of echoing text and pausing seem absent from:
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/grub.html#index-echo

Can anyone explain what I might have missed?
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
        based on faith, not based on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata