The Whore of Hate

Massemord have been taking lessons from recent Marduk. Well, they’ve been taking so many lessons that the most appropriate description of their music could be attached to just about any black metal band. It’s fast. It’s hateful. It’s not really Satanic, but it is, shall we say, libertine. Are those descriptions at all helpful? No, but Massemord don’t make it easy. Their Polish origins invite comparisons to Behemoth, and this comparison wouldn’t be unwarranted, just as comparing Marduk to Behemoth isn’t stretching the imagination too much. The vocals have the same thickness and underlying accent of Nergal’s. The drums operate like machine guns, similar to Marduk’s output. But there’s the problem. Massemord can be perfectly described in reference to more successful bands. They lack musical agency, and it’s a hole of their own making.

“The Whore of Hate” is a hodgepodge of vague metaphors and cliches. It sounds good, but there’s little substance to back it up. The composition is flimsy even upon looking at the title. What exactly is a “whore of hate?” Does the whore belong to hate, or is the woman herself hateful? Or, on a deeper level, is the whore a manifestation of hate itself? The artwork doesn’t make anything clearer, as it just shows the cut up image of a figure in black and white. Yeah, black and white—that’s grim. It could be a metaphor for corporal mutilation and spiritual decay, but in the end, the meaning of the image is just as fragmented as its subject.

One can also see the lack of substance in the lyrics, and the track titles also take on a level of arbitrariness. So let’s take inventory: “waking up to life, stabbing out a cigarette upon my genitals,” from “Assault the Nature;” “It’s I who’s coming, the one who raped the death,” from “Praise the Whoredom;” “beneath me an abyss stinking of darkness, full of days extorted from memory, full of days that can’t be born for me,” from “Overcuming the Whore of Hate.” I’ve taken the lines out of context to show that, given their ambiguous nature, the context really doesn’t matter. One could easily copy and paste them side-by-side, put them into a new song, and call it “Kitty Kat Kalamity.” Oh, and did you get it? Overcuming! That’s kind of like overpunning!

Admittedly, nitpicking about lyrics in black metal might seem pointless. English is presumably not Massemord’s native language, and they’re just participating in a larger stylistic tradition. Still, it shows that Massemord only occupy a place of repetition in the black metal aesthetic, not one of generation. It’s true that lyrics aren’t incredibly important, but they separate the good from the great and are windows into a band’s artistic integrity. If one could cut and paste the lyrics, couldn’t one cut and paste the music too?

As negative as these criticisms seem, “The Whore of Hate” is well-executed. All the typical adjectives apply here—vicious, ferocious, and (dare I say it) brutal. Though the songs contain a great amount of variation, it’s difficult to separate one from the other. There’s always a blast beat section with expansive tremolo riffs behind it. Then the tempo slows to mid-paced gallops for head-bang moments. Sometimes the composition takes minimalistic turns, during which the guitars are muted and the vocalist spouts something like an anthem, but these brief moments are only the means of leading into another head-jarring section.

In essence, these moments are contrast for contrast’s sake, variation for variation’s sake. The tracks will begin with something interesting, as though to tease the listener. Both “Even If the Fate is About to Change” and “Rape the Presence” begin with bass arpeggios, but after their introductions, the vocalist enters and never lets up. He is always screaming, and it almost seems compensatory. Cold and mechanical, the production itself doesn’t aid in variation either. The guitars let up, and the tempo drops, but the volume and intensity still remain the same. Other times, the variation is annoying. The listener gets treated to the sound of a woman crying throughout the second-half of “Eerie We Have to Be!” I wonder if this is the same woman we hear in all the other bands. In any case, musical variation ought to carry atmospheric variation, but “The Whore of Hate” includes no such thing.

Nevertheless, Massemord are at their best when they aren’t blast-beating. The longer track lengths of the album’s second-half allow the band to explore a more brooding pace. Toward the end of “Horrify through Self-Destruction,” the drums go into a simplistic pounding, like the sound of knocking on a door or cloven hooves stomping on wooden floors. The guitars then screech into a heavy, menacing pace, slowing in observance of the scarred landscape of the human soul. This is one of the rare moments of “The Whore of Hate” that inspires the imagination. Most often, though, the music enters the ears but never the mind.

“The Whore of Hate” is music for music’s sake. It promises raging black metal, and it delivers raging black metal. One can imagine that, upon entering the studio, the band members thought, “We want to sound like X-Band. We want to sound like Y-Band.” However, disappointment is closely tied to one’s expectations. The album isn’t completely original, but it is a talented affirmation of what black metal fans like. The band uses what fans like as a source of energy and legitimacy, and so Massemord stay true to the genre, for the better.

Polish metallers MASSEMORD was formed in 2000 and has since then released 4 demos, 1 live album and 2 full-length’s, with this effort, “The Whore Of Hate” being the second. Their first album “Let The World Burn” (2007) was an amazing album but this is something even better.

“The Whore Of Hate” is a album by a band that has grown and realized that in order to make something great, you have to be great and with furious blast-beats, ripping guitars, a bass work out of this world and a vocalist who is one of the best in black metal they prove themselves to be way beyond just great, they earn reach the rank of AMAZING!

Every song on this album is very well organized and written which is a huge improvement since the latest album. Musically it is mainly the same blast-beat driven black metal as it were on “Let The World Burn” but they also add some different flavors into the music. I can here slower parts that were present on the previous album and on the fifth track, “Horrify Through Self-Destruction” the music takes a real slow pace, but they handle it really well and in the end that song is one of the best tracks of the album. The faster parts are of course still their favorite element and songs like “Rape The Presence” and “Overcuming The Whore Of Hate” are pieces of wonderful musical creation of the fastest rank there is.

Talking of the music, the ones performing the music on this release are exceptionally good at what they do and as I previously stated their vocalist Namtar is definitely one of the best there is in black metal. By combining harsh shrieks, low growls and a form of shouts that he likes to do he creates a unique personality which is something not every vocalist got nowadays. The bass lines played by Sars are also pretty amazing, it is very rare that black metal features such a technical bass work as this album does. The drums performed by Darkside are not even worth commenting since we all know that polish drummers are the best drummers there is.

MASSEMORD’s “The Whore Of Hate” are together with ALGHAZANTH’s album “Wreath Of Thevetat” one of the best albums this year and are worth by everyone out there looking for some sweet music. Poland once again proves that they are the strongest name in metal right now.