I and other writers have found themselves overdosing on the poisoned apples and indeed albums of Matron Thorn lately. Personally, tackling both Benighted In Sodom and Oblivion Gate towards the end of last year I could have happily taken a long break from his work and it certainly divides the listener. Prolific in a multitude of acts I find myself drawn back though, perhaps a bit too soon, to what is probably his best-known outfit and one of the most contentious with all the squabbles that occurred down the line Ævangelist. This seemed intriguing being the 3rd Evil Dream he has crafted (and no I doubt you really have to have listened to the last 2 parts, I haven’t) and the fact that it is a one-track album running at 46 minutes length. Also, Matron is not doing the singing here and that task has been left to the ever-reliable Stéphane Gerbaud ex of Anorexia Nervosa. I was expecting a nightmarish and tortured experience here and that is certainly what I got.
Chains rattle, droning noise which could be snores of our sleeper chill the bones, there’s some spoken word samples possibly from an obscure vampire film that escapes me, the words “it smells like a grave” send a shiver down the bones. Lightning flashes and the music take’s disharmonic form, guitars uncoiling and a filthy decrepit vocal sermon gurgles in the background. We are in an unholy deconsecrated place and its filthy and horrid in every respect. That’s not to say it is bad though as it slowly unravels over the next ¾ of an hour. Black doom is the slow caress of seduction and the undead glamour the listener and set about sinking fangs into necks. There’s something perverse about it all and it is really quite ugly too. The main music is at times punctuated by brief ambient patterns as our sleeper moves more deeply into the void of Morpheus but on the whole that guitar loops its contagious weave offering little respite the cadaverous craggy vocals occasionally cutting in and biting.
Thorn’s signature depressive melodies are all over this, it is easy to identify from other work in aforementioned outfits I have mentioned. Somewhere though the hideous melodies and raptures strike a nerve and this strikes as somewhat better than what I have encountered before. Not great our ground-breaking though, there is still very much the feeling of quantity over quality that I cannot help shifting every time I encounter his dire symphonies of dread. We are informed there is a “special guest appearance by Laurent Clément of The Reptilian Session somewhere in this sprawling opus, don’t ask me where exactly? What is distinguishable are some guitar drop out focussing on the drums and bass and some occasional spoken / babbling interludes.
It’s far from a comfortable listening experience and only the most hardened listener will be content that this seemingly never-ending nightmare plagues them for such a length of time. There’s not much more to say here other than the fact this is a malicious and ghastly piece of work.
(7/10 Pete Woods)
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