Mord und Totschlag

I decided to purchase Mord und Totschlag after reading an article on L'Acephale on Terrorizer Magazine. The philosophical angle used by mainman and founder Set Sothis Nox La seemed like a refreshing area to be explored in a scene that is saturated by Nietsche, occult or odinist ideas.One would think the quality of the music would reflect in an original and passionate way such a welcoming concept. I have to say the music does disappointingly little to express excitingly the lyrical theme of Mord und Totschlag.


'Terror Is Our Tenderness' which is the first full track after the battlefield sounding intro would be representative of the type of sound for most of the album. The initial primal attack of fuzzed up tremolo riffs and vicious blackened vocals of these songs quickly becomes tiresome as the realisation hits that you've heard this type of riffing repeated endlessly since Transylvanian Hunger hit the shelves. These lazy filler riffs play on for far too long which along with the ceaseless vocal barrage and the spatter of blastbeats from what sounds like a tinny drum machine, leaves you feeling numb. It could be argued that the repetition is used to create a ritualistic sound just like Burzum, but the difference is is that Varg often managed to craft his music to truly hypnotic effect by using the right notes, regardless of how primitive some of it seemed.


Some creative moments manage to shine through the generic fuzz though. A haunting slightly minimal acoustic section, accompanied by forllorn female chanting and eerie howling wind effects works itself half way into the track 'Against A Weeping Sea Of Sleep' . This enchanting passage becomes even more of a compellling listen as layers of drone and tremolo work, slowly get let back in to the track. In other tracks the noise effects help to add depth and atmosphere around the otherwise jaded template of droning, screaming and blasting.


For future releases this group might consider putting more effort into finding more interesting riffs, more tempo changes and very importantly more blending of the acoustic neofolk and noise elements with the harsher black metal elements. Certainly this would help in making L'Acephale stand out from the sea of copyists and add musical weight to an already novel lryical slant.

At about 80 minutes in length, this album by L'Acephale sure is a meaty meisterwork. The music could very well be a soundtrack to a truly strange and extremely apocalyptic movie playing in the head of L'Acephale head honcho Set Sothis Nor La - just his name alone makes you wonder what makes him tick! - who is responsible for the "... guitars, battery, theft, butchery and manipulation ...", which description nails exactly what he has done here with the help of others: bringing together different musical influences and elements from varied genres into a nearly perfect whole that makes logical sense even if the result is an intense and violent assault on the listener's eardrums.

One of the dominant tracks is the 21-minute monster "Against a Weeping Sea of Sleep" that starts with repetitive machine-like drumming, hysterical guitar chord squiggles and unbelievalby lizard-like humanoid screeching that eventually are brought down to a long passage of softly strummed acoustic guitar chords repeating again and again with female near-operatic vocals in the background. Though the music is soft, the constant repetition makes the energy in the song tense and concentrated, building in intensity that is relieved somewhat in a series of storm cloud rumbles at one point in the track. Noise guitars later join the acoustic folk music sequence and a quivering mandolin melody also comes in later still to form a sorrowful lamenting trio.

A second important track is the 16-minute outro "Euntes Ibant et Flebant" which in contrast to the rest of the music is an all-ambient construct consisting almost entirely of musique concrete elements: thunderous bomb explosions that provide a rhythmic backbone to the track, air-raid sirens, recordings of what could be Nazi German war speeches and rallies, an organ drone and choirs that may be amassed angels exclaiming and keening over the erupting carnage and destruction they see below them. A lone guitar playing clean rippling tones over and over provides a melancholy commentary on the futility, even banality, of ceaseless war and devastation and on humanity's exasperating tendency to allow itself to be led by manipulative and greedy politicians and their propaganda.

The other 8 tracks are shorter affairs and can be a bewildering and confusing mixture of fire-scorched noise, extremely violent BM, pure-toned ambient soundscapes and even more bomb explosions and other found sounds. This obviously makes for a lot of musical inconsistency especially when the band seems to go from one musical extreme to the other. In only about half the tracks here you can make out a definite L'Acephale style of brutal, inhuman rhythms, demented and shrill BM guitars and even more demented BM screeching. An early track "Terror is Our Tenderness" is fairly typical of this mayhem: screaming banshee / chainsaw vocals, relentless martial machine rhythms, hornet guitars and, later in the track, what sounds like a computer or synth vomiting hot liquid silver wormy gunk while bombs and gunfire are continuously going off. Following straight after "Terror ..." is another bout of aural violence "The Book of Lies" which piles on the punishment with insane industrial BM rhythms and bloodcurdling reptilian screaming. This happens to be my favourite track on the album - L'Acephale must have borrowed their cymbals from fellow extreme US metallers Rigor Sardonicous - those damn saucepan lids drive you nuts! Later in the album we get the surprising track "Funeral Procession" which consists entirely of pure deep gong tones. "Immeasurably Dreary" is another great track where poisonous acid rain BM guitar pizzles down continuously while those never-ending bombs keep flying through the air and exploding.

Inevitably on such a highly ambitious recording as this there are going to be some clunkers. "Heartless and Miserable" sounds corny with the melodramatic spoken vocals going over lyrics which emphasise the grim misery of life (they do go on a bit) while cheesy space tones tinkle in the background. "Psalm of Misery", the only melodic and song-like track in an album of rigid machine rhythms and hissy-fit reptile vocals, does not come off too well either: the singing is controlled and maudlin and I keep thinking any minute I'll be asked to sing along and clap hands, the song has got that kind of swanky melody.

Overall this is a monumental recording and one of the most remarkable I've heard so far in 2007. The music may be all over the place in style (mostly BM / ambient / folk / musique concrete) but it's held together by a narrative to be found in the CD packaging that provides direction and an energy that can be too much to bear sometimes.

The DVD-like packaging includes a booklet with lyrics to most songs and the manifesto of the anarchic French secret society Acephale founded by Georges Batailles in the late 1930's, a period of some interest to the L'Acephale folks. Several white-on-black illustrations in the booklet come from various issues of the magazine published by the original Acephale and these include the headless man picture based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous "The Vitruvian Man" image which comes from the magazine's first issue. What looks like a reproduction of a Zdzislaw Beksinski painting with skeletal soldiers also appears in the booklet.

All right, I am going to start off with telling you that I didnt choose to listen to this on my own.. Acephale was recommended to me by a friend of mine who sent the album to me... something like this I normally wouldn't give a second glance at seeing as how it is from Portland Oregon and the song titles just reek of indie trash just like the city its from... more than likely the creators of this project are scene kids that are making this project for no other reason than having an ego boost... because I can not figure out why they made this to begin with..... more than likely sheer boredom.

On to the "music"
The album consists of short 'ambient' passages that break their songs apart... like the description says the band is described as black metal/AMBIENT/folk... which for me is never a good sign because the average black metaller can't pull anything off other than powerchords and tremelo picked melodies that never go anywhere.. so when these guys try and branch out into another genre and develop interludes they fail pretty badly on account that if a person actively listens to the ambient genre they'd know this is a rather childish attempt at sounding evil. Random. Childish. Garbage.

The actual songs on this album are pretty long .. too long actually.. they're repetitive powerchord structured riffs played at maximum speed with the occasional wandering melody slipping in and out... best way i can describe these songs is uninspired and boring.. seems almost like they got together and were like "lets make black metal" and followed a blue print layed out by other generic bands before them... Randomly in the middle of the track Against a Sea of Weeping Sleep (sounds rather emo to me) they have a long drawn out acoustic based breakdown.. which I guess this is where they attempt to put in their Folk influence while still playing somewhat distorted riffs thrown in... this counteracts the entire feel album and seems like they just put it in there to sound 'depressive'. Throughout the album the vocalist(s) growl just like any other band out there .. scream.. snarl.. whatever.. bland and boring as could be. Their songs sound like they want to play like someone else... and they just can not develop their own sound.. Acephale sounds like all their influences they swallowed up whole .. digested .. and excreted into a rather large fecal impactment that had to be surgically removed and put on display in a freak museum.

What's with the French band name and the German album titles?..you're from Portland OREGON...not France..not Germany... oh.... but I guess English is not the most grim of languages. Very well. I've been noticing that trend.... Americans using other languages in album titles...song titles... thats annoying. Which is precisely what this band is.
Annoying. 1%.