Talk about business as usual and I had to smile. Putting together the 1st review list of the year 2 names stuck out, both of them prolific artists who we will probably get stacks more albums from over the course of 2021. On the one hand it’s Rogga Johansson with one of his many acts Stass. It would be easy to refer to him as delivering the meat and turnips of SweDeath which knows no limits but he did catch us out a little with Furnace last year. Then we have this fellow, Maurice de Jong, who is not quite as simple to sum up but an artist with equally as many creative paths and one who works in blackened noise as much as anything else. Yes, you are probably thinking it too but just how interesting would it be if the 2 of them combined forces and created a musical act between them? Well stranger things have happened.
Anyway, enough prevaricating and let’s get to Mories latest project Schemer Heer. Apparently, it means Twilight Lord and said to have contrasts to Vetus Supulcrum and recorded “exclusively with a guitar synth (MEL 9) and using orchestral percussion” the interesting thing here for those obsessed by genre is that as far as I am concerned descriptors of black metal and dungeon synth here are pretty much invalid. Basically, this is classical music more than anything else and the 8 compact tracks work as movements within the mainframe each telling a part of a story that is very filmic in execution.
Starting with ‘Our Tumultuous Journey Over The Frozen Mountain Path’ we could easily be a passenger with Jack Torrance and family. It’s a chilling and malevolent ride that owes as much to the likes of Mussorgsky, Shostakovich and Stravinsky as anything more contemporary and its easy to find yourself drawn into the icy world shivering as one anticipates what is coming next. The tracks are all 4-5 minutes long and don’t outstay their welcome, moving onto the next chapter all that really weighs you down are the descriptive song titles themselves. Stirring and evocative and not without a certain nostalgia to it there are times here that a Hitchcockian spectre or in truth one of Bernard Herrmann hangs over these movements of swirling keyboards and subtle choral chants. Descending into catacombs and caverns it is at times a macabre journey of sinister rites, the booming drum accompaniment on the title track and the swirling keys see the listener in a place of mystery and intrigue, the baroque movement majestic and austere.
The vision of a deranged magician is never far away, a bell tolls before the composer takes us on a ‘Luminous Stride Through The Valley Of Death’ and the imagination unfolds at the ghastly visions we perhaps unwittingly find ourselves gazing upon. No surprise finding Lovecraft referenced by ‘The Glorious Rise Of The Unnameable Ones’ and this is the perfect accompaniment to a book of spine tingling terrors on a cold dark winter’s night. Peeling off into a Carnival Of Souls with ‘The Immortal Herald Of Ancient Death’ this has certainly done its job and whatever wickedness comes our way from Mories next surely won’t be far behind. This will do very nicely until then.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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