Moss - Horrible Night

By Natalie Zina Walschots. The fourth full-length from English purveyors of doom lugubriousness Moss, Horrible Night is a droning monument to misery and the ponderous, inextricable weight of existence; it also represents a distinct lightening in tone and execution from their past efforts. While still drenched in distortion and a profound, reverberating melancholy

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Originally published here by Exclaim.

Artwork by Reuben Sawyer / Rainbath Visual

The fourth full-length from English purveyors of doom lugubriousness Moss, Horrible Night is a droning monument to misery and the ponderous, inextricable weight of existence; it also represents a distinct lightening in tone and execution from their past efforts. While still drenched in distortion and a profound, reverberating melancholy, Horrible Night is nimbler than their other releases, featuring two songs clocking in at less than ten minutes (and even one under five).

Deeply influenced by dark, occult atmospheres and the writings of horror icon H.P. Lovecraft, despite this drift towards more dextrous compositions, Moss continue to create suffocating, claustrophobic aural landscapes. It's as though the record is smothering the listener via smoke inhalation, the thick tones and inexorable weight of the songs leeching all oxygen from the room. The towering "Dark Lady" goes for a particularly tight stranglehold, the massive riffs drawing closer with each shuddering revolution, like a boa constrictor crushing you to death with its body, then swallowing you whole.

Not heavy for the sake of, Horrible Night also possesses sophisticated melodies and even bright moments of clarity, especially in the haunting clarion vocals. This is a weird, wicked and intoxicating record.

Deathhammer - Evil Power

By Andy Osborn. Show No Mercy is the best Slayer album. While the battle for the top spot usually rages between the unholy trio of Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss -- occasionally a vocal minority will claim that Hell Awaits is indeed the victor -- everyone who believes this is just plain wrong.

By Andy Osborn.

Artwork by Eduard Johnson

Show No Mercy is the best Slayer album. While the battle for the top spot usually rages between the unholy trio of Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss -- occasionally a vocal minority will claim that Hell Awaits is indeed the victor -- everyone who believes this is just plain wrong. The youthful energy and hellish passion of Slayer’s debut, their answer to Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All, is the most enduring and entertaining piece of work in their entire catalog.

This was long before the days when they started to take themselves seriously, hit the bottle too hard, and ultimately become a self-parody which unfortunately lumbers on to this day. With their debut, Slayer perfected Venom’s style and imagery, but had the added benefit of actually being able to play their instruments and write memorable songs. Sure, the performances can be sloppy and the lyrics laughable, but that’s part of what makes it so endearing. They were forging a new path and having a blast along the way.

Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

A few decades later, Deathhammer’s Evil Power hits this same sweet spot. That their style has been done to death and undeniably perfected long ago makes this third album from the demonic Norwegians less than unique, but that hardly has an effect on the nostalgia trip. The furious back and forth riffing of Sergeant Salsten and Sadomancer is just as good as the Kerry-Hanneman early days and at times even more fun and ridiculous. Salsten, also holding vocal duties, does his best ‘Tom Araya just out of puberty’ impression, bringing his voice to a ball-busting screech as often as humanly possible. The whole thing is a smile-inducing, goofy blur, and I love every second of it.

Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

The blistering leads are pulled off with a wonderfully sloppy elegance. Ever-changing, little is recycled and the songs are short and to the point; other than the wonderfully self-indulgent solos there’s not a moment of filler. Like most of their Hell’s Headbangers brethren, Deathhammer are are obsessed with overt satanic imagery and lyrics. But they clearly don’t take themselves too seriously, to which the cartoon Dark Lord on the album cover can attest.

Evil Power will never be as important or remembered as Show No Mercy. But by harnessing the same attitude -- “Fuck it, let’s thrash and worship Satan!” -- while writing undeniably fun, riff-centric music, Deathhammer prove that there’s nothing wrong with a proper homage; even 30 years later.

Gnaw Their Tongues - Abyss of Longing Throats

By Ulla Roschat. Gnaw Their Tongues, aka Mories, the Dutch one man band who scares people with his sonic mayhem since 2006, releases his 8th full length album Abyss of Longing Throats. … and this is not exactly happy music either. It is seven tracks and about 43 minutes of industrial black metal… well, basically

By Ulla Roschat.


Gnaw Their Tongues, aka Mories, the Dutch one man band who scares people with his sonic mayhem since 2006, releases his 8th full length album Abyss of Longing Throats. … and this is not exactly happy music either.

It is seven tracks and about 43 minutes of industrial black metal… well, basically, but there are very many other musical styles and elements involved and they are absolutely masterfully deployed.

Photo by Justin Snow.

There’s an omnipresent backdrop of dissonant noisy, droney sounds that gets permeated, covered and complemented by a raw black metal frenzy, industrial electronic sounds and noise, orchestral, classical parts, spoken word samples, doom and drone sounds.

The vocals sometimes sound like black metal shrieks and screams, or chant-like chorals and sometimes modified, distorted growls like they are creeping through a veil of lysergic dreams. They seem to wander like ghosts, both haunted and haunting, through the dense inextricable soundscape, seeking some escape or salvation from a menacing force that gets increasingly terrifying.

In dark, doomy, ethereal and psychotic atmospheres of utter blackness and bleakness they express their pain and fear, fury, despair and sorrow.

From the start everything gets increasingly disconnected, chaotic, desolate and insane until in the end finally all things fall apart.

Throughout the album there’s not one moment of relaxation or contemplation, even in the few parts where shreds of melodies are involved. The melodies don’t alternate with the harsh and dissonant parts, they are added to them which makes the whole thing climb even higher on the scale of eerieness and disturbance.

Everything cumulates and intertwines into a seemingly chaotic, painful, violent outburst of insanity - seemingly, because it is nonrandom, it’s carefully planned, with targeted movements and it's brilliantly executed,

This chaos is one of the most “symphonious” cacophonies I ever listened to. It’s a complicated, multilayered and interwoven soundscape, an opus of sound with an extraordinary compelling power and intensity.