VIII-Orual

Blackened doom sounds like my favorite thing in the world on paper. It has the mind-hollowing extremity of funeral doom; long, plodding sentences of noise halfheartedly resembling riffs shuffling beneath a dread to massive and slow to really be put to a tempo - and the balefulness of black metal, shrieks echoing above the tectonic shifts, covering the subjects of insanity, anti-cosmic horror and the killing of gods and ideas. It's almost a perfect thing, really - and probably one of the few genres of music that really gets my cold blood boiling. But, the problem with most bands in execution is that they basically take funeral doom and scream over it - barely stretching the idea beyond a literal interpretation of a mashup. Basically, it's boring music with barely enough atmosphere to house greenhouse gasses. However, Portland's Mizmor (also known as מזמור, but will be written Roamnized because I'm not copy and pasting that every time) manages to actually do something fairly neat with the idea. Much like Stabat Mater, or Elysian Blaze, Mizmor takes the best elements of funeral doom (mainly the atmosphere and dreadfully elongated sounds) and seamlessly combines them with the furious blasting and wailing melodies of black metal. It's just so beautifully executed and powerful that one really can't make a case for a lot of other bands in the genre.

Opening up with the slow crawl and shrieks, it sounds like VIII-Orual will be a lot like the standard fare of the genre - more noise music than metal, less about passion and more about delivery. But only a few minutes in gives way to a full formed miasma of sound. The guitars are playing anti-riffs, just sort of noisy progressions, while a bass guitar looms beneath, playing gigantic and huge waveforms that don't even really sound like they're supposed to be notes. Cavernous and nightmarish shrieks bounce from one ear to the next, drowning the listener in sound, while a leviathan lurks beneath the pitch black waves. It's an extremely frightening experience, the first few minutes, because it's almost impossible to tell where it's going - occasionally hinting at some melody or a percussive hit here or there. It isn't until an absolutely stunning black metal riff comes in that the song takes some sort of structure.

This is when the leviathan shows itself, and its gargantuan head surfaces to swallow the listener. As one is battered and crushed by the powerful maw of the beast, there's only hope of escape by descending further into the beast's stomach. The second part of the single is melodic, blistering, swirling and concussive. It's an absolutely smack to the head and the tremolo and blast-beats start, with twin guitars molting muted harmonies over each other before churning out doom-y riffs that would not be uncommon on Sargeist's slower songs. Melody and filth blend easily in this section while shrieks echo pain and despair. The juxtaposition is jarring and emotive, and absolutely relentless.

The third section is the belly of the beast - long growls of noise, dragging chains, distant grunts and chants echo. There's no melody, there's no song, there's really no structure. There's droning throat singing in the background, with a metallic clanging thumping in an arrhythmic matter, while a sample playing over everything. It's just buried enough where hearing the exact language is next to impossible. This dense, impossibly bleak atmosphere is the sound of being devoured within the titanic creature that is VIII - Orual - it's the sound of utter hopelessness. The sound of fainting.

But, just before a feeling of pure dread is reached, there is hope of escape as the creature begins to rumble and shake to release it's contents back up its throat. This release plummets the listener onto dry land, onto the shores of some unknown land as the moon shines brightly. Slight, ethereal melodies drone playfully as a clean guitar sweeps gentle mournful notes. This is the one beautiful moment on the album - the one true relief form the maddening strange of the rest of the composition. But, even that respite is short lived, as it quickly turns into a hopeless drone, crushing drums play funereal marches over the impossibly huge riff. This is the realization that where you landed may in fact be much worse, may be filled with far more horrors than were ever in the sea. As the trees sway and the sounds of this place become fully alive, this is the moment that there is no relief - there is no end to the draining madness.

So, all that's left is to walk back into the sea - to where impossibly huge creatures live - and where they will gnash you and batter you, but will never kill you, they will just vomit you back up onto some other strange place. That creature named Mizmor - a ravenous and tireless creature, calls you back into the sea with a slow, harmonious guitar, before swallowing you whole again, to restart the whole process. It's draining, it's demanding, it's frightening, but there's something better about feeling that, than going back to the familiarity of the land and it's dreadful inhabitants.

A phenomenal experience - and the best example of how to use atmosphere and pacing in the genre. Hell is not fire and brimstone and fury - hell, in this case, is water, sand, and a slow quiet dread that eventually swallows you whole and drowns you.