BLUT AUS NORD — MoRT (review)

Album · 2006 · Atmospheric Black Metal

4/5 · 2012-04-30
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.