Reviews by Jason Guest
Moribund Records have been bringing extreme metal from the underground to the world since 1993. And from their ever-growing list, we have a few recent releases up for review. From Australia, we have the latest album from Tasmanian black metal cult Thrall, Aokigahara Jukai, and from the occult black metal enigma Moon, we have their second full length, The Nine Gates. From the dismal depths of Italy comes the second full length from one-man black metal project Vardan, …Dreaming …Living My Funeral. And USA thrash heavyweights Nocturnal Fear have teamed up with Brazil’s Seges Findere for the split release, Allied For The Upcoming Genocide. Happy bunnies one and all.
Of course, all of these bands are available for children’s parties, weddings, and corporate events. To book, visit Moribund Records on their website or on Facebook. And if you’re unsure which band would be suitable for your jamboree, take a peek at their YouTube page. Right, let battle commence…
Thrall – Aokigahara Jukai
In the shadow of Mount Fuji is one of the world’s most popular suicide spots, that of the Aokigahara forest. Since the 1950s, over 500 cheerless cherubs have entered the forest rope in hand to cast off this mortal coil, leaving their corpse for either beast, the authorities, or looters (yes, looters) to discover. Yep, those Tasmanian terrors Thrall really know how to pick a cheery subject for inspiration. Grinding the dust of doom, death and crust into their blackened blend, with album number three, Aokigahara Jukai, Thrall have delivered a piece of work that is every bit as morbidly intriguing as what remains of the cadaver in the artwork.
Like its inspiration, the sound of this album is all-engulfing, a dense inescapable and suffocating mass of dirty riffs, inexorable drumming, foreboding atmospherics, and Tom Void’s menacing and tortured vocals. That there’s something wrong, deeply so, within the human psyche and existence itself and the (de)compositions here embody that unsettling feeling that it’s not about to leave us any time soon. With the eerie chimes of the fragile and crusted ‘Ghost Chrysalides’ and the vast menace of ‘Slaves’ to close the album, Aokigahara Jukai is an unnerving, unsettling, and oddly beguiling experience.
7.5 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Longing For Death
- Aokigahara Jukai
- Of Hate
- Its Toothless Maw
- Ubasute
- The Pact
- Ghost Chrysalides
- Slaves
Moon (Australia) – The Nine Gates
Much like the first full length from Australia’s Moon, 2010’s Caduceus Chalice (originally limited to 100 hand-numbered copies but re-released on CD in 2011 by Moribund), this album casts a similarly long shadow. Like ‘In Shadow’ that opened the last album, the eerie introduction of ‘The Rejection Of Flesh’ with its chimes intimating all the mysteries beyond the veil of existence finishes abruptly to give way to the lo-fi, moonlit gloom infused in the vast, joyless tracks that follow.
With ominous atmospherics, ghostly winds, and ghoulish howls brushing against the ice cold melancholic melodies that blow across the torpid tempos and anguished wastelands, the already stonily bleak and lethargic pallor is augmented by a chilling organ and subtly warped arrangements. Whatever remnants of hope once existed are lost forever in the album’s barren and forlorn soundscapes, perhaps rendered best in the album’s incredible climax, ‘The Gate of The Moon’. A slow spiral upward to a release that is austere, uplifting and mystical, while it may drag on a bit here and there, like its predecessor, The Nine Gates plots an intense path worth subjecting yourself to on more than one occasion.
7 out of 10
Track Listing:
- The Rejection Of Flesh
- Inhale Darkness
- Poison From The Abyss
- Sabbat
- Astral Blood
- Lilim Drowning
- Spiritless Winds
- Gate Of The Moon
Vardan – …Dreaming …Living My Funeral
Album number five brings more of the misery, melancholy, desolation, anguish, despondency, and dejection that the one-man Italian doom and gloom project Vardan is renowned for. Howling agonised shrieks are scattered across the desolate ice-cold landscapes peppered with minimalist melodies that echo on the steel breeze of the four epic tracks that make up …Dreaming …Living My Funeral. With a deep sense of futility pervading the performance, production, and glacial atmospherics, despair and disillusionment come to the fore of each track, whether in the brittle melodies, the disinclined drumming that keep the tracks staggering along feebly, the fragile drones that cloud the remote air, or the ever-expanding depths of misery beneath every meaningless step. Endearingly dismal, this is curiously beautiful.
7 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Living My Funeral
- Wandering Spirit
- …Dreaming My Funeral
- Cold Way To Exist
Nocturnal Fear / Seges Findere – Allied for the Upcoming Genocide
I swear Nocturnal Fear’s instruments and vocal mic have a CAPS LOCK button and it’s gaffa-taped down. Theirs is true metal, war metal, t-shirt-sleeve-amputating, bicep-busting, full-frontal ball-swelling, gun-toting, not-for-girls-or-not-“true”-metallers, violence-inciting metal of the highest order. Every track they’ve ever written – in blood, of course – has been forged in the fires of their enemies’ devastation and delivered at destructive volume. Blasting past in a flash of ludicrous-speed riffs distilled from the German thrash titans of ye olde school, these guys mean every razored riff, every brutal beat, and every hostile word delivered with all the fervour of an evangelical fundamentalist. Nope, Nocturnal Fear won’t and don’t compromise. That’s why their sound hasn’t changed over the years and the four tracks here sound just like all their other releases.
5 out of 10
Sharing this release – as well as a love for war, intolerance, misanthropy and hatred – is Seges Findere (Latin for “The Final Harvest”), the project of anti-Christian blasphemer Brazil nut Strigoi. Fuelled by bestial black and death metal, vicious and ruthless in both sound and sentiment, Seges Findere’s two tracks are not even mediocre. With worse-than-ordinary riffs rammed into achingly-predictable structures that seem to go on for ever, the airplane sound effect lifted straight from the end of ‘In The Flesh?’ from Pink Floyd’s The Wall (that hilariously cuts off just as the baby starts crying) and the cheap and nasty keyboards in the coda of ‘On The Bloodshores Of Normandie’ speak volumes. War! What is it good for? Not much according to this.
2 out of 10
Track Listing:
Nocturnal Fear:
- Blood On The Battlefield
- Infernal Nuclear War
- Cast From Heaven 2013
- Invade To Conquer (Pt.2)
Seges Findere:
- Luftwaffe Trumpet Resounds
- On The Bloodshores Of Normandie
