MORD – Christendom perished

(CD, Southern Lord)

Finland will be sending a metal-band called Lori to this years Eurovision Song Contest. Well, actually, not so much a metal-band but that kind of masked puppet show troupe that was started by GWAR (or Kiss, depending on how far back you want to go) who focus their artistic expression on extensive monster-masks and outrageous stage antics. Yes, every halfway decent metal fan will only laugh about them – or sneer diabolically – but as a tool to fake their way into regular kids’ homes, who want to be a little revolutionary here and there, this will work, because the mainstream public is unable to differentiate between pseudo-metal like this and truer forms. I guess, we all have to make a living somehow. I a glad I don’t have to wear a lot of make up to make mine, but that’s how it goes. Metal bands usually try to find their niche in a way, which is good, because the more pinpointed music is, the sharper and more interesting it gets. Nothing is as worse as a mediocre band that plays standard music. If a mediocre band plays very extreme music this can still be interesting.

The duo Mord has chosen black metal and a stance against the Christian religion as their shtick and, yes, they do wear masks. Moreover, they have the gall to call number tracks as “opus I” to “opus IX”. Up to here nothing new, you might think, so why bother about them? What is remarkable about their style is the way in which they actually try to incorporate hellstorm-sounds into their metal. Of course, it is fast and Nordra screams in the most demonic way, but at times the sounds of the guitars is combined with some samples(?) or noises(?) that are as much white noise as a true black metal head is able to stand. And that adds a little spice to their music. “Opus III” has this kind of noise as a nice structural element, while otherwise it functions as an underlying fabric like the wave of satanic hate that will come over the earth when the gates of hell open on the final day, to use a fitting figure of speech. For a debut album this one is definitely ripe and destilled finely. These two dudes have breathed in the fumes from the melting core of black metal, to use another fitting figure of speech.

All through the nine tracks on “Christendom perished” the speed is superfast, the guitars and bass lay down 1/16 and 32/1 powerchords and the vocals scream on top of their lungs, which makes we wonder how they will be able to keep this tempo up live. Some tracks do over some breathing space with little bridges that are less extreme or the band dropping into some heavy riffage (“opus VI” might be among the more accessible tracks – though that is hard to say in a lot of ways). Apart from that it is all blasting and buzzing death metal noise.