Time Signature
The hateful ritual...
Genre: black metal
Black metal has gone through a lot of changes, starting with the sloppy and murky primitive thrash metal of the likes of Hellhammer/Celtic Frost and Venom and being radically changed in the Norwegian revolution of the genre in the 1990s which introduced many of the elements that characterize the genre today. The pre-Norwegian black metal and the post-Norwegian black metal sound very different.
With "Mysteriorum Prophanationis Sepulcralis" the Spanish black metal act Muert show us that the two incarnations of black metal can easily be combined into some quite compelling music as they combine the chaotic feel of blastbeats and tremolo-picking with thumping and heavy riffage. The brilliantly titled 'Holocaust In The Christian Tombs' starts out with some galloping riffage and adopts a thumping rhythm before all hell breaks loose in the form of black metal blasts a strangely melodic tremolo-picked figure. 'Hordes in Battle' is like an inverted structural version, starting out with an onslaught of ferocious blastbeats and concluding with some quite heavy beats, while 'In the Graveyard My Perdition' starts out heavy and then changes into an almost punky affair. Thus Muert change back and forth between different, quite simple and often primitive, genre elements from post-90s and pre-90s black metal throughout their album, and this dynamic works excellently, I must say - just check tracks like 'The Hateful Ritual' and 'Storm in the Cathedral of God'.
Despite the many changes and elements, the music on this album does not come across as being chaotic, and there is even a lot of melody inherent in many of the blastbeat-and-tremolo sections. The tracks on the album seem organic - primarily because of the lo-fi production and the dynamics of the drumming (which features a lot of nicely placed cymbal accents) - but at the same time the album is very focused and has a dark atmosphere to it. The vocals are harsh and angry and have a brutal crunch to them courtesy of a guitar distortion pedal or some similar effect.
"Mysteriorum Prophanationis Sepulcralis" captures the essence of black metal and teems with both the darkness and rawness that characterizes the genre. It is organic and focused at the same time, and fans of the likes of Darkthrone should find it appealing.