Black Metal History Month - Mur : "Cut the Rivers Vein"

 This one-man Minnesota based black metal projects reaches into both death metal and doom, The moody atmosphere and darkness is what keeps it roots in black metal. Though by the time we get into the second song and lower gurgling gutturals bubble up from the slowly syncopated riff the death metal wrestles for dominance. The undercurrent of blast beats dragging back from left of center. Very unsettling and heavy, while having abundant yet un=romantic melodies is one of the signatures to this album's sound. 

Most of the the time you hear the term folk metal it is used to describe bands trying to make drinking music for dwarves or pull off some kind of LARPing soundtrack. Here it is referring to Iron and Wine. "Lowered Cloud" drones off this vibe. Sung vocals still carry a despondent bleak feel even in the vulnerable plea. It locks in on a heavier riff with well layered guitars. The title track works off a somewhat similar formula with clean acoustic guitar paving the way. Where it differs is how it goes from being something more traditionally black metal in the sonic intent of its means spirited attack and then takes a turn in more of a doomy direction. The most impressive part of this is how fluidly it works and sound pretty organic like it's a band jamming it out in their practice space. A    t almost eleven and a half minutes some of the fat on the front end could have been trimmed.   

After four minutes of downtrodden folk "A Powerful Uneasy Feeling" explodes into something more powerfully blackened. If this was a horror movie there might be issues with pacing, the same could how efficiently he makes us of dynamics in his arrangements. Though not a dealbreaker as up to this point it has still been interesting. Can the same be said for the twelve-minute closing song?  For the first five minutes it lingers at the infernal crossroads where depressive black metal and funeral doom meet. Then it blasts off into a black metal for a bit with a few breathers interspaced. There is even a more triumphant classic metal gallop with a guitar solo over it. I will give this album a 9 as black metal can be a hard genre at times to breathe new life into which compensates for the sometimes-ponderous arrangements. 

Mur :"Heart Worm"

This album is an oddity. Slow depressing doom with interesting almost lo-fi production and guitar tones that avoid the ringing feed back most bands in the genre rely on as their life blood. The clean tones are fragile and almost indie rock sounding. This was not made from a stead diet of Evoken that's for sure. This is a one man band and the dude is pretty versatile as he goes from neo-folk to a more blackened take that opens the third song by sounding like this is the Strokes take on black metal. The sometimes fuzzy production could stand to be a little smoother here as jumbles the sound around some guitar melodies that are unique to the genre. "Migration Incantation" speeds up into a more punk flavored ball of punchy propulsion. Vocally it's more black metal than not. A few moments where the distortion on the recording obscures the song a little. The production is really a catch 22 here as it gives this album much of its personality, but hampers some of the guitar melodies which also give the songs a fresh perspective of where metal meets indie rock.

"Wyeth Shroud" finds the album going back down into a doomier place, before being blasted back off into black metal. The blast beats are not handled in the traditional way, nor is there tremolo picked guitar riding it. It does move trough several moods, which does more justice to black metal than the genre has heard in the past few weeks at least. There is more of a depressive black metal mood looming around the corners of "Snakeskin on the Lake". The screams come in over the clang of clean guitars and are as convincing as if it had been blast beats. This project gets a lot of credit for not taking the most obvious roads. "Limbless Frozen Monarch" continues the cleaner tones established in the previous songs and gets even more delicate with them. The song climaxes in the unexpected manner of the song twisting into funeral doom.

The last song finds it gracefully going into black metal. The song dives into a clean indie rock part that sounds like it very well be a Sun Kil Moon song. I'll give this album a 8.5, I'm unsure how much additional play this will get as the production is a little rough, but if you are looking for unique black metal and tired on the same old same old blast beaten path, then this is highly recommended.

6.8