If decomposing, mind-scouring black metal is what your evil doctor ordered, then look no further than Ophidian Forest. Densest Green, the first track on this split with Hæresiarchs of Dis, is the sonic equivalent of waking up happy that you’re still alive but then noticing that your entrails are on the wrong side of your epidermis and covered in three month old mould. Great news for anyone that has already gone mad but really bad news if this is the first time this has ever happened.
It gets a whole lot worse, or better depending on your mental stamina, by the second track. Thirty seconds in and I’m wondering whether that pretty solid looking world around me is starting to become gossamer thin as reality turns its back on me. The plodding guitars are tuned to almost gut wrenching levels of extremity and I feel myself instinctively reaching out to find something, anything, solid to hold on to. This is like a warped Meads of Asphodel on a bad trip. There’s a distinctly Cajun feel in there somewhere too and the guitar twang that goes with a broken down car in the middle of the deep south and that awful feeling that things are about to go badly wrong (reviewer vomits on the floor as the instinct to fee takes hold). Just don’t take the short cut through the forest.
The third track is even more mind bending so it is with a mixture of extreme disappointment and relief that I realise the next band on this hideous split, Hæresiarchs of Dis, has started up.
With a slightly distorted, punky feel, and odd, extreme vocals that lean towards bands like Inquisition the sneaking suspicion dawns on me that this is probably equally as screwed up in its own way as Ophidian Forest. Lo and behold, by the third and fourth tracks on the second part of this split, Manifestation and then Wolfmoon respectively, I realise that I’d rather turn and face what Ophidian Forest was conjuring up back there in that stinking grove than whatever is behind this (reviewer vomits on floor again).
I have no idea what Hæresiarchs of Dis are but this is the work of Cernunnos, a one man band from San Jose, California, who takes his name from that used to broadly describe the horned gods of Celtic myth (Ophidian Forest are a triumvirate of musicians from Croatia, Holland and San Francisco, by the way).
It’s mostly is a rehash of some of his older work ahead of a full album release next month called Thirty-Eighth Sermon of the Unborn. A lovely bit of fucked up nonsense it is too despite that. Uncaringly and cleverly dark black metal with backbone of punk thrash that takes me back to that still horribly fresh Carpathian Forest strain of black metal which made me realise that nihilists and serial killers really don’t care if my body parts are smashed and bleeding. With some very cool interludes like Heritage of the Night and Blood and Souls, this is top notch, especially for a split that sounds from the background info I can gather like it was cobbled together. Recommended, but not for those with a sensitive disposition.
(8/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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