Album Review: Mouth Of Madness – Event Horizon
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I’ve heard it said that once you go black you never go back, and while I’m not sure that saying refers to musical preferences, it does nonetheless go some way to explaining why I’ve found this album so addictive lately.
There’s a point or two to be docked immediately for the dual intro, the first track being spooky but inessential ambience, the second being a more agreeable distorted affair, but at 1.33 in length still nothing you’d be heartsick to be bereft of. It's a minor point perhaps, but why not just combine the tracks if they had to be here at all? Or at least ditch the ambient one as an imperative matter, because when Mouth of Madness cast loose the fetters on their riffy black metal with it’s sublime bass tone blasting through the mix like a nail bomb in a bakery, the results are spectacular. When it comes to the dark arts, you’d be forgiven for thinking only of icebound mountaintops and the harsh beauty of snowy forests at night, branches like black talons lancing skyward to spear the starlight. But other climes claim notoriety within the blasphemous sphere of the black; the Greeks evolved an altogether warmer take on the genre for the sun-loving Satanist. You could not wish for a finer soundtrack as Baphomet’s black hands clasp about the lily throats of the last Priests on Athens. Mouth of Madness themselves do not Hail not from Greece, but nonetheless, it was this sound that immediately caught my ear. The heavy bass. The venerable metal influences, such as the lengthy homage to classic doom on “Fireborn” from 4.33 onward; St. Vitus, Trouble, Candlemass – you can hear their mournful lineage permeate every stray angstrom of the song. The primal tattoo beat by drums not trying to achieve maximum velocity, but sheer force in every strike – “Masaan” clubs you insensible not with speed and viciousness but by swinging from it’s entire spine, as though to punch canyons into the foreheads of foemen. Distortion like the buzzing of fat flies stuck to inspissating pools of blood, hollowed corpses a-sway from the branches of fig trees. Hell is said to be hot; it makes sense that the devil would like a Mediterranean climate.
It’s something of a surprise to me then, that the promo sheet claims them to be more in line with a death metal act. I suppose I can sort of hear it in the chunky riffing of “Worms”, somewhere adjacent to the Thrash-but-harsher ethos of death metal’s earliest ministrations. But then I hear the bass tremolo work within the same song, and my fancy flies to the infernal sermons of blackened Grecian act Necromantia. As “At the Heart of the Unknown” crafts bleeding strata of melodies alongside these immense foundational riff patterns – you know the type, power chords rooted on the 7th fret of the A string, and thevarious frettings commonly moved to from there - accompanied by the hoarse bellow of the vocals...are we not called back to the humid swamps of Varathron? Surely it’s not just me that hears it? The irrepressible footfall of the mighty Rotting Christ? “Non-Serviam” would slot like a velvet glove into this tracklist, and conversely(heretical though it may be to say it) some of these songs would not be too far adrift slotted onto, say, “Thy Mighty Contract”. Listen to “Year of the Dog” for example, and then listen to “His Sleeping Majesty” by Rotting Christ; the flares of forceful snare hits, never outlandishly fast but done with the genuine intention of drilling the kit to the earth’s core. The focus on melody, again not spectacularly complex but catchy and militant, the bass powering through like a third arm. These two songs by different bands compliment each other perfectly; had you altered the production appropriately and told me that Event Horizon was some lost release from the Hellenic black metal scene circa the early 90’s... really and truly I don’t know that I’d disbelieve you.
If the promo sheet has me doubting myself, one thing I’m in no way willing to budge a solitary inch on is the sad affliction this album suffers from. A unified pathology was quick to arise given the clear indicators of the condition, and thus was a name put to the malady: TMAB, or – in full – Too Much Ambient Bullshit. It seemingly wasn’t enough to double up on intros when one alone would suffice; a second ambient interlude appears and adds a completely needless 38 seconds of further Ambience. Finally, we are herded to pasture with a third, lengthier piece of yet more ambient nonsense. On a charitable day, I might have forgiven one of these; preferably the last such track (it’s the longest but at least, as the final track, there would be no risk of stalled forward movement through the album). But three? When one is an introduction to an introduction, one is only 38 seconds, and one is a longer but ultimately inessential capstone to a release that otherwise ended in fine style with the crushing strains of “Masaan”? I’m no experienced hand when it comes to ambient music, and the promo sheet assures me that the minds behind these pieces are a pioneering outfit by the name of Popol Vuh, so perhaps these tracks would speak to someone with a deeper appreciation for the style, but personally I don’t feel that any of these three tracks adds much of anything to the release. With that said, It’s slim pickings for complaints otherwise. “Fireborn” could perhaps use a bit of a tweak – it feels as though it reaches a logical, satisfying end at 6.11, only to then continue on to another section, running on to nine plus minutes by the time it’s done. That last section is good, but maybe by reordering the track a little, having that section occur before the apparent conclusion within the sixth minute, you might avoid this sense of a song that ends twice. If I'd happily see the ambient songs pruned, I’ve no such urges with the more metallic benedictions on offer.
You know that sense of receiving something you didn’t know you wanted? This album virtually drooled that feeling for me. It hadn’t occurred to me that the precise sound I needed right at this moment in time was this exact variety of black metal. It’s had me revisiting those early Greek masterpieces, re-familiarising myself with it and enjoying it just as much as I did the first time. Bar a handful of questionable decisions, Mouth of Madness emerge anew as a mighty exemplar of the black arts. At every note, I could see the waters run crimson at the shoreline, masses of cut throats spilling out offerings to run past the cloven hoof of Satan, ever watchful. Fronds sway in a light coastal breeze, as though at worship themselves. Choirs of screaming, pleading, begging that another should bleed in their stead. The low drone of incantations, words spoken that no human mouth should ever know how to speak, words so inimical to man that the throats of the speakers shred and boil away within their necks, leaving them to fall gargling and clawing, wreathed in red steam. Blue skies, blue skies, no cloud in sight, god’s eye awake and ablaze above to bake the skins of the sacrifices breathing their lasts in bubbles through grinning slashes down to the bone. Gold sands churn underfoot as acolytes convulse and gyrate, limbs spasming, flailing, popping out of joint in wet bundles of torn muscle fibre; not one will leave the seafront alive, and all will end as tangled, broken, mewling bundles crunched and knotted on the beach. The knives rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, red roses blooming on the sand.
The screams keep coming.
The cult keeps slitting.
And he keeps watching.
