A World Long Dead

I have heard about 40% of this recording having downloaded it from the internet early last year. This album existed on platter for about a year before its release. The web content detracts from the value of this, in my opinion. The whole work needs to be heard from start to finish to achieve its effect although it serves as good promotion.

The beginning will be a great surprise for those expecting lo-fi primitivism suggested by earlier Baal Gadrial and DTL works. It is an electric piano piece which devastates through sadness and intricacy of its feeling even if a little lacking in technical refinement. The other dodgy aspect of this album are the horribly off-key choral vocals on track 2 as well as the unnecessarily long and repetitive closing track. But the negatives stop there.

The first act of viciousness here are the possessed vocals and the crap, dusty guitar sound – soft, almost velvet and muddled through layers of foggy dis-production. The vocals have a cutting, emotive quality about them that best come through when perceived though the headphones. Azgorh achieves a repulsive atmosphere through that vocal approach alone with his linear, depressive musicianship contributing strokes of downcast, tearful colour, dripping like wet ink and very well represented in the brownish black and white cover-art. There is some very guarded use of dissonant, ringing keyboards on this which works quite nicely.

Track 5 “Mysteriis Anguis” is the most interesting piece for me, be that because it was not made public until the album’s release or because of the intriguing atmospheric guitars and dynamic structuring of the riff therein. I think the album climaxes here, with a long, depressing descent to follow in the form of the 10-minute long title track.

Originally published in Procession of Black Doom zine #1