siLLy puPPy While second wave of black metal was without a doubt the product of Norwegian wrath against humankind and religious practices with plenty of church burnings to add some visuals, the relative adaptive nature of the buzzsaw guitar led bombast and simple song structures allowed various elements to hybridize quite quickly making black metal one of the most versatile subgenera in the entire metal universe. While Darkthrone, Emperor, Immortal and Mayhem may have led Norway’s darkened dramatic take on the 80s metal that evolved into the 90s, it became clear in the 2000s that France was taking the lead having created some of the most unique experimental examples of taking black metal into surreal new realities.

The one man band BLUT AUS NORD also known as Vindsval took the atmospheric black metal approach of Burzum and Naglfar and adopted some of the first traces of psychedelic rock as far back as “Ultime Thulée” in 1995 but once the BLUT AUS NORD project became a fully fueled band beginning with 2003’s “The Work Which Transforms God,” Vindsval and friends took the black metal world by storm by crafting a new level of sophistication that had never been achieved with depressive chugging atonal guitar riffs enshrouded by suffocating atmospheres and crafting a sonicscape that reflected the frequencies of true hellish underworlds.

Three years later this Mondeville outfit took the stylistic approach on the breakthrough album to its logical conclusion with the fifth full-album MoRT which featured Vindsval on guitar and vocals along with bandmates W.D. Feld on drums and keyboards and GhÖst on bass. The album which pretty much was a continuous flow of bleak mind-numbing surreality which featured eight tracks symbolizing a “Chapter” of a greater nebulous concept never quite defined. The overall mood of the album is terrorizing as MoRT allows you to enter a strange new world where nothing is familiar and excels in atonal deformity unlike anything else that has been experienced before or after.

Beginning with terrifying processed vocals and dark ambient swirls, the atonal amorphous guitar riffs swim in a gelatinous vacuum with abstract drum beats, dissonant swells of distortion and thick depressive atmospheres that sound like single musical notes are tortured until they cease to exude a life force. In many ways MoRT exudes the absolute perfect fusion of black metal textural sensibilities with icy dark ambient atmospherics crafting a perfect balance of calculated metrics. Twisted progressive time signatures slink and slither like magically enhanced serpents writhing out of cold fiery pits in the bowels of the deepest recesses of the underworld, a place so devoid of light and human tangibility that one is reduced to a spiritual cryogenic state of the soul.

Perhaps one of the most adventurous black metal experiences one could possibly encounter, it’s fair to say that BLUT AUS NORD changed the black metal world exponentially with “The Work Which Transforms God” and this even more bizarre example of MoRT which would apparently shift the tectonic plates leading many other French black metal bands like Deathspell Omega and S.V.E.S.T. to adopt some of the deranged harsh tactics employed on this sonic display of freakery. Perhaps the least metal of BLUT AUS NORD’s canon, MoRT excels at being utterly outside the boundaries of virtually anything orthodox in any musical genre. The processed unintelligible vocals that erupt occasionally only add an emphatic sense of horror to the incessant parade of soul splitting awe that lasts for 47 minutes of sonic terror.

Needless to say, MoRT is unlike any other musical experience you could imagine existed and is perhaps one of the most terrifying albums that has ever been produced. Taking on aspects of black metal, dark ambient, progressive rock and even freeform no wave accompanied by a series of deep processed otherworldly growls and the occasional liturgical choirs peaking out of the din, MoRT is without a doubt one that will disturb even the most hardened music lover upon first listen and will send any uninitiated passerby to the insane asylum. This music requires learning an entirely new language in many ways to comprehend as it craftily displays some of the most extreme possibilities of a black-metal-in-opposition approach. While BLUT AUS NORD has crafted some excellent albums in its multi-decade career, it’s this one MoRT that i find the most original and utterly fascinating in its unapologetic experimental rampage.

Warthur Whereas Blut Aus Nord's preceding album to this, The Work Which Transforms God, presented a series of compositions that juxtaposed dark industrial ambient sections with eruptions of black metal fury, here they take their experiment further. On MoRT, just as the distinctions between tracks break down (each reduced to a single chapter in one massive piece), so too does the distinction between the black metal, industrial, and ambient aspects of the group's sound, yielding a unique sonic landscape through which tormented vocals in the style of Tibetan throat singing warble.

It certainly isn't for everyone, and it's no surprise that people have an extreme reaction to it one way or another, but for my money it's one of the most rewarding sonic experiments arising from the black metal scene I have heard.

Wilytank If I ever wanted to listen to dissonant, nightmarish black metal, I'd turn to Blut aus Nord first. From 'The Mystical Beast of Rebellion' onward, it's what they've been pretty much known for. However, among all those albums, 'MoRT' has stood out as the most dark and disturbing to listen to. That hasn't made it actually better than the others though.

The first noticeable uniqueness in this album is how much slower it is compared to Blut aus Nord's previous material. Even 'The Work Which Transforms God' whose most well known pieces are the slower ones (particularly "Procession of Dead Clowns") doesn't match up with 'MoRT'. I suppose a good amount of that has to do with 'MoRT''s darker atmosphere. While 'The Work...' had faster songs that were really dissonant sounding, the slower ones had a more melancholic tinge. Every track on 'MoRT' is basically one bad trip or mental rape after another. This is music you listen to when your soul gets abducted and gets transported across some dark, ethereal void. The dissonant guitar work helps bring this about, but surprisingly so do the vocals. Vindisval uses a mixture of unintelligible screeches, growls, whispers, chants, and more to further conjure this frightening experience. The production is noticeably dryer as well, so the foggier sound will make you get even more lost in this black haze.

'MoRT' does have problems though, and the most notable problems were also present on 'The Mystical Beast of Rebellion'; but at the same time, these flaws were worked on to make them a little more bearable. The first problem is having the approximately 30 seconds of non-music between the songs. The good news though is that Blut aus Nord made these sections a lot more interesting. While all the sections between the songs on '...Mystical Beast...' were all quiet wind sounds, 'MoRT' instead uses creepy dissonant sounds that go right along with the music. My favorite of these is the transition between "Chapter VII" and "Chapter VIII", which has some really low and distorted growls as if Lucifer is speaking to the listener; quite fitting considering it's going into the final track of the album and the listener meets the master of this dark void. The other notable problem is the naming of the songs simply as "Chapter I", "Chapter II", etc.; and like '...Mystical Beast...', 'MoRT' isn't Blut aus Nord's most memorable output, but it's still very intriguing to listen to from beginning to end and there's more individual songs that I find myself going back to.

Though it falls on the weaker side of Blut aus Nord's spectrum of albums, 'MoRT' isn't bad in any sense. If you're looking for something really dark and disturbing to listen to, then this is a great album to check out, because if there's one thing this album does better than Blut aus Nord's other works, it's that it creates a darker atmosphere than any of the others and it works out pretty well.