Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Mordor > Csejthe > Reviews
Mordor - Csejthe

What's under this rock? - 90%

we hope you die, March 12th, 2019

In terms of analysing the listenability of different styles of metal, I find it helps to think of a solar system. At the centre, making up the sun, would be universally recognisable giants such as Iron Maiden or Metallica. If you head out in one direction you may come across gas giants like Cannibal Corpse and Napalm Death, head off in the other direction you meet Mastodon, Opeth, and Gojira. But the further you head out in any direction the weirder the music gets. This extremity is not defined by sheer unadulterated noise, but measured by how much it resembles music. Out in the cold, beyond the far reaches of Pluto, beyond the noise fanatics, one trick grind fans, and post black metal (urgh), lie artists like Mordor.

Formed of black metal pedigree Arog back in 1987, they revamped into Mordor in 1990, and shifted musical direction away from guitar based music to what could broadly be described as dark ambient on their first EP ‘Odes’ (1991). Aesthetically similar to black metal in many ways, this music holds the same broad appeal as black metal of the time, but through different musical components. Follow up ‘Csejthe’ (1992) is both a different beast entirely yet the exact same thing. To understand the music of Mordor it is not enough to say that it sits somewhere between dark ambient and lo-fi black metal. This is true in the sense that it is daaark music…devoid of structure, and built more of a tapestry of contrasting moods. But the actual building blocks borrow from industrial, post-punk, and avant-garde as much as they do anything remotely ‘metal’.

‘Csejthe’ is divided into tracks that make up roughly a full albums worth of material. But ‘tracks’ are hardly the fitting demarcations to analyse this album. Through the use of minimal synths, sparing guitars reminiscent of early gothic rock, a drum machine, and distant growls and chants, Mordor take us on a journey of disconnected but unsettlingly compelling experiences. It’s like navigating a large deserted castle, or a set of underground passageways without any bearing or notion of where you’re heading. Behind each door is a new horror, an unknown torture. We become accustomed to this only to move on to the next chamber and the new terror it may hold.

The drum machine works its way through simple yet weirdly groovy rhythms. Guitars occasionally find themselves getting carried along with this, and the music picks up into a creepy death march, only to conclude in stagnation, complemented by discord, usually played on a synth, offset by repeated lyrics uttered like an incantation. One can feel the frustration of the music building this tension, only to take it all away and move on to the next idea as if nothing that’s gone before even mattered. This leads me back to the inescapable idea that this is like a highly disorientating nocturnal journey without end or resolution. This will appeal to black metal, dark ambient, and funeral doom fans alike, and indeed the basic building blocks that make up the music borrow from all three styles, but ‘Csejthe’ does not fit comfortably into any such category, nor indeed into one’s mind for that matter. The closest anyone has come to such an unsettlingly creepy sound is Beherit on their ambient/electronica works.

Mordor sits well beyond the shadow of Pluto on the very edge of the sun’s orbit, not through blast beats and unrelenting distortion, but through being nightmarishly creepy. Enough familiar features of music are dangled before the listener only to be distorted, disfigured, mutilated. Like rewriting a child’s dreams and fantasies, turning them into something beyond fear. Maybe I didn’t talk it up enough in the above analysis, because as music it seems to rearrange your psyche at the sub-atomic level. I’ll let you decide if that’s a recommendation or not.

Originally published at: Hate Meditations

a very interesting second album - 70%

endinginfire, May 26th, 2007

I was very eager to purchase this album after owning odes for some time. I have to say that on first impression, I hated it, but after many listens I now like it almost as much as odes. The songwriting is even more experimental and much more keyboard driven. The addition of female voice(not singing) adds a totally new spin on their sound, but it is hard to get used to. The production is alot different form the first album, and this is were I wish it was different. The first album was so cold and distant and lifeless, but this production seems too dry and kills alot of the atmosphere. I really wish that they could remix this and add some more reverb touches becuase the songs themselves are very strong.

Overall this is a good album and recommended for fans of the first album, but be prepared to have to get used to the changes, it is well worth it.