TonguesBooming voices and walls of sound abound in a pitch black atmosphere. This is the occult “bog of black and deathly fog” from Denmark’s Tongues. The four tracks of this EP darkly dredge the bottom of sludgy barrels. “Void Meditation” is an appropriate title for the opener whose qualities point to nothing but a black world with black values. The nastiness has an stench-ridden air of Mayhem about it. Anarchically violent twists, dark utterances from a warlord and the deep and throaty roars tell us there’s no compromise as everything points to doom in both a musical and an existential sense. This hefty lump leads into a panoply of distant screams, shattering violence and hostile riffs. Some way inside this blackened pot, “Will of Fire” stops and Tongues sludge their way dirtily along the slippery void before exploding and perambulating towards an unsatisfactory conclusion.

It seemed inevitable that doom would be on the agenda, and “Last Grip of the Hand of Guilt” fulfils this expectation. This dingy piece suits the band well as it’s more cohesive than the rest of the tracks which seem to aspire only to being as dark as physically possible. As if to emphasise the point, “Bloodline of the Blind” comprises gothically dark utterances from a black church. The meditative preaching is accompanied by the ominous tones of the organ playing in the background. The plodding progress was not intended to set pulses racing but I felt no impact. For me the solemnity left me distant and alienated from the atmosphere, which was somewhere else but not where I was.

I didn’t get the point of all this. “Thelesis Ignis” is like a parody of blackness. It’s like a static statement from an ultra dark place with a series of sounds but no progression that I could understand or particularly want to understand. If there is a category called hyper black metal, then this it. But that shouldn’t be an end in itself, and that came across as being the message.

(5/10 Andrew Doherty)

http://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/thel-sis-ignis