Description

2017 press on white vinyl with printed innersleeve. Limited 500 copies

For some years, it seemed that Meyhna’ch was dead. This was implied in the liner notes of Remains of a Ruined, Dead Cursed Soul. As it turned out, he was merely on a self-imposed hiatus. Disgusted with the way Black Metal was becoming more trendy and accepted, he saw no other option but to disappear. Yet his anger grew over the course of these years and he then chose to return in an effort to spread darkness and evil and to take Black Metal back for the older cults. This is according to the notes inside the 2001 release, Black Millenium (Grimly Reborn). This album is only the third full-length from Mutiilation, despite the band’s lengthy history. As much as this album seems to get panned in comparison to Mutiilation’s older material, it stands up as a damn solid black metal album in it’s own right. OK, so the atmosphere of old is entirely smothered by a relatively clear, sterile production – but in spite of that, you can still palpably sense M’yanech’s drug-fueled hatred seething from every note. Overall this a lot faster and more intense than Vampires.. and Remains.., lashing out with a much more aggressive approach rather than the languid darkness they once conjured up. Reduced entirely to a drum-machine driven solo project, the new face of Mutiilation is one of intense hatred rather than melancholic madness. After a deceptively clean, strummed-chord intro, ‘The Eggs Of Melancholy’ smacks you over the head with an insane 5 minutes of high speed blackened chaos. It’s followed by the slower, creeping riffage of ‘New False Prophet’, which has since become something of an anthem. The chord progressions and clean-picked main riff in this song ooze complete lunacy, fitting well with the disturbing lyrical content (which is a lot more audible here than ever before). The rest of the tracks swing between the same high speed assault (‘Curse My Funeral’ and the title track being particularly vicious) and slower ones more reminiscent of the early demo material given a complete production overhaul (‘The Hanged Priest’ and ‘No Mercy For Humans’, which is almost groovy). There’s also an amusing interlude track, ‘A Dream’, in which M’yancech croaks a spoken-word section over some acoustic guitars, sounding like a demented French narrator from some obscure horror movie. Overall, this is a different Mutiilation, but still an extremely good one.

Track list:
1. The Eggs Of Melancholy
2. New False Prophet
3. The Hanged Priest
4. Curse My Funeral
5. Inferi Ira Ductus
6. A Dream
7. Black Millenium
8. No Mercy For Humans
9. Black As Lead And Death
10. Outro