Black Construction

This review comes a year too late, but for the sake of completeness and curiosity I will relate a story of Myrddraal's earlier effort in the field of morbid music.

Myrddraal come from Canberra, Australia. They experienced the loss of a full line-up even before any music was released. This tape was recorded by a band of just two in the winter of 1999. Although this is probably one of the most unlistenable recording I have ever heard, it did succeed to make all who matter aware of their existance.

The music here is actually very interesting ultra-raw Black Metal, performed in such a fashion that it becomes an exercise in ambience and mood rather than power and rhythm. Morose, over-driven guitar riffs, over tiny drums with something like 2 different drum samples audible and distant, thin vocals. The occasional synth interludes are so loud they drown out everything else in the mix. Basically all the demons plaguing early demo recordings leave their scar on this tape. It is, however well packaged and includes the full lyrics. These are very well-written and bear the authorship of an underground personality Thybault. Obscure tales of darkness and occult power channeled into the destruction of the old ways of Europe for the benefit of ways even older. The meaning is hard to make out, but does inspire some thought… the band selected them according to their own interpretation, since the 4 songs on the tape are meant to bear a common theme. Unfortunately they do not fit the music very well and the singing is horribly off-time.

The last song is notable for a slightly more enlightened use of the arcane recording conditions. This is a slow, gloomy performance with excellent, mindless vocals, that soar through the stereo system as if from a great distance, death and demons upon Mt Ainslie. Ultimately this tape serves more as a reminder of Myrddraal's existence, valuable as a historical record of the band's past.

*this review was originally published in the now-defunct webzine thegatesofhell.org

The demo in question was not pressed professionally, which meant that some copies had inferiour sound quality. I beieve that mine was one of them.