- Band: Mortis Mutilati
- Album: Mélopée Funèbre [Funeral Chant]
- Country of Origin: France
- Album Type: Full Length, 8 tracks
- Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal, Depressive Black Metal
- Record Label: Naturmacht Productions
- Year: 2015
- Relevant Links: Facebook , Bandcamp , Official Site
For my first review on Screams of the Forest, I wanted to immediately take myself out of my comfort zone and review a band I had never heard of. When I first decided to do this site, my intention was to help myself appreciate a lot of the digital music I’ve been listening to as of late, and hopefully share bands with other people that may not have heard of them. Granted, this blog is going to mainly be a blog devoted to bands that lie somewhere in the neighborhood of black metal, mostly atmospheric, folk, pagan, or depressive black metal, but I feel that we are in the midst of a new era for this genre, and there is plenty of variation out there to cover such a seemingly narrow topic. Being an unexperienced hack when it comes to music writing, I feel like this is a good way to hopefully allow myself to produce decent articles that are a bit out of the mainstream as well as avoiding the numerous clichés that I see most music writers doing.
With that out of the way, now for the topic at hand.
Aside from Gojira, I will admit that I am fairly oblivious to the French metal scene (feel free to recommend bands). One always hears about numerous European countries in most metal discussions, but rarely have I heard any talk about French musicians that aren’t pop singers. Many years ago, I was somewhat scared away from French music altogether under a somewhat unfortunate circumstance.
You see, I once had a roommate that listened to French Hip Hop 24/7, a genre that was simply not my cup of tea at all. This was made especially odd, considering the fact that I am not, not have I ever lived in France – I’m American and so was he. I actually tolerate rap and hip-hop in small doses, but there was something disingenuous about the French variety that completely killed it for me. Perhaps writing off an entire country due to my dislike for a narrow genre of music was somewhat immature, and I now see my mistake every time I travel to Bandcamp.
I stumbled upon Mortis Mutilati under a somewhat silly circumstance, in that I fell in love with the album art for Mélopée Funèbre, the very album we are going to discuss today. Despite the inherent shallowness of choosing to listen to a band based on either a cool logo or a cool cover, I immediately enjoyed what I heard. This was a band, that had a different sound than what I was used to when thinking about “standard black metal” if such a thing even exists. The man behind this aural funeral procession calls himself Macabre and has released three full length albums so far including 2012’s Sombre Neurasthénie [Dark Neurasthenia], 2013’s Nameless Here for Evermore and a handful of demos and splits.
The album starts with a somber acoustic piece entitled Mélopée Funèbre, the title track, which paints a melancholic tone with faded out guitars and haunting angelic voices. This sets the stage for an album that conveys a disturbing correlation between love and death – and a hint that perhaps they are not mutually exclusive. Other songs Such as Ophelia, and Eros and Thanatos continue this theme without a single musical note straying from the overall tone of the concept.
Rather than employing the often-muddy “wall of sound” artistic style found in a lot of black metal, Macabre paints a “dirgy” soundscape full of melodic guitar riffs peppered with aggressive drum beats. While I bet there are many other bands that sound far more similar, my mind immediately drew a connection to the way a Ukrainian band called Drudkh sounds most of the time, and their use of guitar and solos vs the harshness of other black metal bands. This harmony of sound styles somehow works in a way that conveys the theme of death and funerals without succumbing to the clichés of most depressive black metal – being angry for no reason, or too heavy to elicit the feelings that the genre is supposed to bring out. It also helps that Macabre, himself, pierces his music with a sorrowful set of vocals that really help convey the tone.
I mentioned the acoustic piece earlier, but there are a few more notable stylistic choices found on the album including piano pieces, and even a section found on the final track of the album (Fingers of Death) starting with a section that would most normally be heard in a drone metal album. This shows me that Macabre is not a slave to the tried and true “paint by numbers” approach to black metal, but this isn’t some sort of pretentious “experimentation for the sake of it” affair either.
All-in-all this was a solid listen and one of my favorite albums of 2015 – I highly recommend it.
Arcadia Pod 