CLOAK OF ALTERING — The Night Comes Illuminated with Death (review)

CLOAK OF ALTERING — The Night Comes Illuminated with Death album cover Album · 2011 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
bartosso
Insanity painted death

What a warped and passionate genius resides in this inconspicuous Dutchman. With Gnaw Their Tongues Mories de Jong used a gut-wrenching experimental noise to portray the very depths of hell. De Magia Veterum, on the other hand, is nothing less than a dissonant whirlwind of insanity - a black metal soundtrack to misanthropy. Is his newest project more similar the first one or the latter? If I had to choose I'd say Cloak of Altering is similar to DMV... yet it's still something completely apart.

Is that a frantic elegy to a dying world? A desperate wail from the void, illuminated with golden radiation? Whatever that is, it's one of the most traditionally structured albums from Mories. And yet one of the most intriguing. Mories takes black metal to another level with this project. If you're familiar with breakcore artist Venetian Snares, and especially his ROSSZ CSILLAG ALATT SZÜLETETT album, you know how eclectic and dark electronica can be. Cloak of Altering is a marriage of dark ambient/IDM and avant-garde black metal in the vein of MIGDAL BAVEL with creepily symphonic textures. Even though Mories still shocks me with his daring experiments in the field of noise and dark ambient, the music in THE NIGHT COMES ILLUMINATED WITH DEATH is way more structured and harmonious than his previous albums with, say, De Magia Veterum. Chaos and dissonance are still there as inherent parts of Mories' songwriting style. However, a haunting atmosphere, created with apocalyptic harmonies and overpowering electronica, is what this music is all about.

It's Mories on the path of passion, despair and wonder. The album bursts out with eclectic wall of sound, abruptly, without any introduction. It sounds like a soulful depiction of cosmic apocalypse. If death is the only natural state of matter and all life is just a temporary mutation scattered around the space, then this is the most passionate tribute to nature I've ever heard.
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