Christendom Perished

Why would Southern Lord release this? I mean, know that lately they specialize in crappy black metal, but this is crappy and generic Norwegian/Swedish stuff rather than crappy post-black or pseudo-experimental material. It's still terrible but it's terrible in a very different way from how they ordinarily work. Maybe O'Malley and Anderson are seeking more 'true' black metal cred, who knows.

Anyway this sucks. Mord essentially sounds like a much less interesting and catchy Dark Funeral: blast and tremolo black metal with no sense of dynamics apart from some occasional weird sound effects and slower passages. The riffs are entirely derived from the most third-string Swedish and Norwegian black metal possible, with conventional, overused melodies that aren't interesting enough to rise above the style and aren't different enough to be unique. This is an incredibly flat album; everything operates at one tempo, one melodic sense, one rhythm, and the only thing that seems to change from track to track is what array of useless riffs will be employed. Vocal and drum performances are similarly static and unchanging; the only notable feature is that the drums sound programmed sometimes and real at others. The effect of this on the music is nothing, but it's curious.

This album is almost remarkably unremarkable; every idea on this release has been expressed several thousand times and its execution is nowhere near good enough to excuse the cliched nature of the music. Nothing about this is memorable, notable, or interesting in any way. Almost any random black metal album you purchase is going to be more interesting and worthwhile than this one, so save your money and skip this in favor of something worthwhile.

Ahh, Norwegian black metal. Staunch, typical, old hat, call it what you will but it’s got a sound and feeling all its’ own. MORD are lending their take on that sound with their raw soundscapes and vocal attacks. Christendom Perished is their first full length and there are few better labels to debut on than Southern Lord. One of their demos was actually released on Southern Lord as a CD and on Seven Gates of Hell as a 7″ vinyl.

Being a black metal band from Norway must be a very difficult task these days as the scene itself is stale and almost dead but still, bands are popping up in droves. This is happening despite the fact that the complete black metal focus has shifted to scenes in the US and France, leaving the Scandinavians all alone to dwell in the scene they created. With this, the Scandinavian scene is stale and few are progressing past music put out over 10 years ago.

So, with that rant said, how does MORD fit into the BM scene? Well, they’re a young band from this dying scene with little do differ them from the rest of the crowd. They fit the typical black metal mold almost perfectly: MORD started as a one man group with Nordra playing all the instruments and doing the vocals, and in 2003 Necrolucas joined the fold to play the skins. With this, it puts MORD into a destitute position because they have above average production and this could help to really mold their cold sound. With strong blastbeats and a good vocal effects box, they can turn the listener on their ear. The art work for this album is a bit soft in that it’s just their logo over back drop of a destroyed city. I really dig the ornamentation of the logo, with the M and D being claws and the O being an inverted cross made of wood. That’s an attention to detail that most bands with indecipherable logos seem to forget. But nice art work doesn’t make a good album.

On to the music. This disc comes in at eight tracks and is about standard length for a black metal CD. Each song is merely called “Opus” followed by the track number. Every track is about average with a good blastbeat drum track in the background. Aside from the occasional vocal effect, the drums are the only thing to stand out on this album (aside from the first track’s opening riffs being very familiar as if I’ve already heard them before). Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me comment on the lyrics since they are in Nordra’s native Norwegian tongue. I’m pretty sure they’re standard fare though: Satan, death, darkness, blasphemy, and the likes. There’s really not a lot I can say about this album that hasn’t been said about other black metal albums before it.

I’m going to keep an eye on these guys in hopes that they are going to get a lot better, after all they still owe Southern Lord another album.

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