MORDOR — Odes (review)

MORDOR — Odes album cover Demo · 1991 · Funeral Doom Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Doomster
Imagine if Neurosis, Khanate, and Thergothon all had a threesome and birthed a fucked-up baby. This is probably what it would sound like.

Mordor is a difficult band to classify. If anything, this Swiss band would be funeral doom, but many sections of this album are just pure noise - though this was released as a demo in 1991 and later reissued in 1995, and is very lo-fi in quality, it still lapses into sections of noise which is not an effect of the quality at all.

The best way I can describe the sound of this album in metaphorical form is in two ways. The first is traveling through old, rotten abandoned crypts. So old, that time itself as well as the stone walls are peeling away from rot and abandoned loneliness. You hear startling, unsettling moans coming from the lowest pits of the crypt, before you come across an old, dusty staircase that leads into darkness. Your morbid curiosity gets the better of you, and you venture in, worried of the horrors you will face. The second description of this would be the lone survivor of the apocalypse. Every shred of hope is lost from you as you realize you are the literal last survivor of this post-Armageddon wasteland. Endlessly wandering through ruined cities, you give up at the top of a skyscraper - and lie, and wait, and die, unable to continue from the choking ashes and blotted out sun.

The album begins with a low, desolate drawl, echoing throughout the walls of the crypt. It sounds really great and extra terrifying on headphones, too. The song is almost 22 minutes long and is highlighted by a massive, towering bass riff. James Plotkin, watch out, there's another bassist joining the fray that can even dethrone you in bass heaviness. The song has various fucked-up growls and, just when you think it's coming to it's closure, the song blasts back into heaviness with an extreme growl - this happens about 4 times through the whole song. As expected from funeral doom, it's very repetitive, and has only about one riff (and slow-as-fucking-hell drums) but it's great at creating a fucked-up, disturbing atmosphere with it's minimalism alone.

The other songs are good too, with "Lamentations for Corrinthe" almost 25 fucking minutes in length, towering over even the aforementioned track. Warning, though: it's 99.9% impossible to find, so Satan be with ye if you're looking for this. If you do manage to get your hands on it, though, you won't be disappointed - it serves as a great addition to any doom freak's collection.

Also, this can serve as a great tool to scare people off from parties, if he or she gets annoyed by those grubby humans. Cheers.
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