With Hearts Toward None

There are those certain times, when the first listening of some record makes me wanna get to the roof and howl at the moon; such is the excitement I feel. It might not be the most innovative musical piece, it might not even be the best of its genre, yet it’s the album that will seize the day and become the ideal bridge over which every occult aspect of the (hyper)human subsistence finds its way out of the body.

“With Hearts Toward None” is Mgła’s most important roll of the dice to date and they win by bringing three sixes. By throwing away the heavy burden of having debuted with their part on the historical “Crushing The Holy Trinity” trilogy, as well as having released some fine EPs and the “Groza” full-length, the two men from Poland come forth to set their own –less harsh maybe, yet absolutely more concise– sound. Faithful to their vision, once again they avoid giving titles to their tracks, assuming their works as single concepts, simply divided into subsections. And somewhere amid the third part of “With Hearts…” comes the revelation; the belief that this music (and now I’m talking about METAL in general) still holds inside the flames that awaken memories and stand as guide in one’s everyday battles.

The new album from Mgła is everything that Watain tried to do with “Lawless Darkness” (and failed), as well as what Ascension approached –with a lot of inspiration and devotion, indeed– with “Consolamentum”. It’s the as-epic-as-it-gets riffs, which don’t have to be countless (in fact some of them are present throughout the whole record, thus strengthening the sense of a true concept) nor always disharmonic or cacophonous. It’s the feeling of pure heavy sound of the old days flowing into the arteries of their blackmetal. It’s the pounding drums of a war to come and the bass guitar that makes speakers grind. It’s those vocals that sing their manifest with such faith, that come to give to the lyrics meanings between the lines so that once the loudspeaker is heard to preach “from the midst of cold ash, comes the voice of the living god…” one is ready to burst out in the streets and search for his (or her) own “Living God”.

“With Hearts Toward None” is the first truly great record of 2012. It succeeds at that because M. and Darkside (both also in Kriegsmaschine –make sure to listen to “Altered States Of Divinity” at some point) redefine blackmetal without stepping one inch away from its pronciples and produce such faith and soul equal to an army of Mujahideen. If the Mayas are right and the world is about to end in the coming December, this is the record that will spin in my stereo when the time comes…

Originally written for:

http://theantifleshnimbus.wordpress.com/