Mount Gaash
Track 1 Starting things off with backwards guitar riffs galore. There's some spooky dark ambiance in the back lots of whispered vocals, the occasional cymbal, and other various noises. Not gonna lie the vocals are pretty unnerving. The guitar riff going throughout is pretty magnificent. Everything is so muffled , I feel like I'm listening to a summoning behind a door or something and there a bunch of people whispering in masks around me. I'm picking up some flute coming in now? The guitars seem to keep getting more and more lost in a haze of reverb while the chattering and other **** takes over, totally weird vibes. This is honestly a lot more strange than I thought it would be, that track was genuinely upsetting at certain moments, good ****.
Track 2 Love how ambient a lot of this is so far. It also feels insanely deconstructed, like taking individual parts and make them more important during certain parts. The lo-fi drums put over these drowning guitars just feels ****ing immense, almost industrial sounding. Loving the ominous feel this one is producing so far, very nightmarish. Thought the transition from the droning guitars to this muffled sparse guitar was very well done. Everything about this one has felt downright lonely so far, everything feels away from everything else, like each different variable of this song was told specifically to not play until it was alone, it's dark and claustrophobic. The whole time there's just this sluggishly moving drum part. This sort of feels like an even further removed from the norm Todesstoss, and I love it, it's freakish. Not sure if those are backwards cymbals in the back or what is making all the screeching, but it ain't bad so I won't complain. My only real complaint is how muddy the mix can get sometimes, not in how lo-fi and isolated it can feel, but in how pushed together some of the parts feel when they're all going at the same time. The little glistening keyboard that came in for a few seconds was pretty nice I must say. Is it just me or does the drum feel like it's getting buried deeper into the mix as the song goes on? Over all this was a damn good track, it could have probably benefited from some slight editing as it is quite long and can get a little boring at certain more drawn out points, but overall don't have too many complaints; the feel of the track was consistently unnerving, I appreciate some music that can get me to feel like that.
Track 3 Now onto the two shortest tracks to give me a bit of a break from the onslaught of long ass tracks on the this album. This one starts with some ambient synths that I can for sure get behind. Got some jazzy drumming and the ominous guitar chords backing this one up. Really liked that one, sparse, ambient, nice tone to it.
Track 4 Just wind samples in the intro of this, and some electronic buzzing near the beginning. Alright could've used some more variety for those first two minutes, but now we're into the meat of the song. Tribal drumming over a lo-fi black metal riff complete with some dirty screaming. The tribal drumming isn't exactly meshing as well I want to it to, it just never feels quite right and a little bit off. The mix feels a little bit muddy, but that might be on purpose, and I'm glad the drumming faded out and I'm left with just the guitar and vocals as I found them a little bit unnecessary and/or distracting.
Track 5 This one ought to be a doozy, 36 minutes of avant lo-fi black metal. Weirdly dark ambient, sorta reminiscent of some dronier parts of that new Roly Porter album. Very spacey, yeah I'd definitely call this outer space music, so desolate and lonely, sad even. The synths have this sharp tone that has a decay that really give off this other-worldly or even other-dimensional vibe, like time is warping around each note bending to slow down, speed up or even disintegrate at a moments notice, it's really trippy. The bassline just came in and it has a slithering quality to it that is unique to this song and a few select others I've heard in my lifetime. The song is in full force now, I honestly don't even know how to describe this well beyond hellish, the wind like noise over the free form drums and tremolo guitar; just ****ing hellish. Those vocals are TERRIFYING and there is something apocalyptic about the way that synth keeps moving up and down in microtones, really creeps me out. Loving the string synths on this, keep the feeling of this grand procession of the apocalypse alive through all of the noisy chaos. Liking the switch to the motorik beat, although I will say that it feels messy over some of the other drums that come in here and there, however that may be intentional idk. The vocals are way up in the front of the mix while everything else sort of hangs in the back disintegrating and mutating into different forms entirely every five seconds. THAT'S A MOTHER****ING PIANO WOAH YES PLEASE MORE OF THIS YES! Loren are you tuning that in post-production? This is an amazing little excursion and is exactly what the song needed honestly, just when it was becoming a little mind-numbing it provides a perfect little 30 second shift there to keep you actively listening, genius placement honestly. Loving the crashing staccato percussion, reminds me of some early Swans. Alright veering into some blackened noisekraut territory? One thing I gotta give to this song and this album in general is I've never heard anything quite like it, I've heard certain elements of it in other bands, but never a product like this. Another one of these incredibly sparse, slow moving guitar solos that Mondo can't seem to get enough of; not really complaining either like I said earlier they have a loneliness about them that I really love. My biggest problems with this album occur when everything happens at once because of the reverb laden production it can feel almost too washed out and muffled at times when it should be more hard-hitting it ends up feeling compressed, not really a critique on the music or composition but just the way some of the production is layed out. Liking the backwards strings(?) right here, gives a nice bookend to the intra-dimensional synths at the beginning of the track. Oh I see everything is backwards, I probably should have noticed that before. Love the synths being used, they're bright but sharpened. Superb track, probably the best I've heard yet.
Track 6 Wind samples straight into a killer atmo bm riff, very Paysage of you Mondo, I like it. Some sort of ambient airplane sounding synth in the background that adds to the atmosphere nicely, I like that it's slowly but surely overtaking the main riff and meshing it all together into this noisy hell set. I know that isn't very consistent with my critique earlier, but here I really like it and I think it benefits in tone instead of hindering it. The vocals keep getting more and more cavernous along with the beat into this one big droning noise piece with barely discernible drumming, it's slow moving, but completely effective. I think people forget how easily a black metal guitar tone can manipulated into pure noise that can really spice up a track and add some flames to the hellscape, which by the way is the best way to describe this song an absolute hellscape. This is more or less turning into an ambient noise piece, a very interesting ambient noise piece might I add; it has these glistening synths that sound like wind chimes and breathy wind like screams and guitars that take up a majority of the mix. That was a wonderful change in pace from the rest of the album, more subdued, more willing to rest on one idea and not being quite as schizophrenic, not that I minded that quality at all, in fact it's one of my favorite things about the album, just good to hear some variation so the form never gets stale.
Track 7 Starts right away with what might be the saddest black metal riff I've ever heard, oh wait a train is coming in and there are some synths. Aw I was hoping it'd rest a little more on just the riff itself, but that's okay. Lots of rumbling noise in the background and that train once again. Absolutely love the little electronic hisses here and there they're quite pretty and add this sort of bruised charm to the whole thing. It all disintegrated into this dark ambient piece pretty quickly, but it has this motorik beat somewhere in the left channel which provides some forward motion to the sci-fi synths and the wind noise. Yeah loving the synths in the section they have that other-worldly feel again. Never heard ambient wind noise with black metal drumming and screaming, it's quite different. There's this little riff, not sure weather it's on a synth or guitar, that is quite pretty somewhere towards the end of this one. This one was good, had a few times here and there where I though something more should happen, but overall I'm pleased.
Track 8 Ambient noise, oh ambient noise how calming you are to what I'm anticipating is the final wave of a long storm. There's another one of those detuning synths that's really freaking me out and making me very uncomfortable. The title really fits "Mount Gaash: Descent" it feels like whatever spawned in earlier and brought about the apocalypse has done it's damage and is now dragging itself and it's army back into the the fiery depths below. Alright so this song is more of a Flood IV type deal where the storm has passed and this is what we're left with. It's stupefying in its quiet cadence of destruction, but also terrifying in that it is the end, not only of this album, but as well as the world that it created and destroyed. The drums really adds well to the whole atmosphere I've been imagining in my head, one final hurrah as they descend into the abyss and all the meanwhile the sun rises in the background. Great ****ing ending to a great album.
Final Verdict: **** man that was really good, I had some minor complaints, but wow that was a great album, kudos.
8/10