I gave up on writing reviews years ago, thinking I was suffering from some kind of writers block, until I realised I was just repeating the same things over and over again.
But was it a problem of having said it all, or was there something else behind the curtain? After a period of introspection, a short one as the answer was so obvious and obvious that I had spent time just ignoring it: I had reached the point of total boredom, listening to so many bands that contributed nothing and just added more fuel for a everlasting fire of boredom and rutine.
But that’s maybe a debate for another time, it’s really great the democratisation and accessibility to produce music at low cost, sometimes with a full equip studio in one of your rooms, but the surplus of generic bands that came out of this is really overwhelming and for me, it killed my will to keep discovering music and listening to new records. Simply put, theres too much of the same.
Now I understand the answer I got from a certain shop in Oslo when I asked about the possibility of selling the vinyl I had released on my own label: real hype booms work and maybe sell good but in general, music buyers are only interested in reissues of classic records. Too old to discover new music with a dead Open-earedness (1) as the academics may call it and works as a good insight into the current situation about abundance and wide range of offer, but ideas and musical resources seems to be drying on variety.
Every now and then there is a real gem, either because of genuine musical freshness with new ideas, original approaches, genre disrupters or because a lot of money has been spent on marketing strategies, buying reviews and hype that has worked. Today i will write about one of these rare finds that manages to get me excited.
Don’t be suspipcious, this whole activity of writing about metal, taking photos, going to gigs etc. still costs me a lot of money to the annoyance of my wife, so this review is totally honest and is more about those gems that come out of the underground every now and then and really motivates me to write and recommend them. Cutting through the cheese, Germany’s up-and-coming black metal force Ad Mortem have finally unveiled their debut album ‘In Honorem Mortis’ and is good, very good.
I want to go back to 2018 to talk about the origins. I know I just wrote in the previous paragraph that this is not a paid review or in any way related to the rotten business of buying reviews to promote albums. But still, there is a bias in this review because I have somehow developed a close relationship with their music.
So for context, as mentioned, it’s early summer 2018 and I’m writing to the man behind Worship Tapes, a true titan and warrior for the metal underground. Notorious for promoting German Black Metal on K7 format. I gave him 50 Euros and asked him to send me whatever he liked because I trusted his taste. Well, I am not that naive and I know that he probably cleared dead stock by sending me horrible tapes that were impossible to sell; but at the same time he sent me some gems and the Ad Mortem demo was among the collection and the only tape I took with me on my summer holiday, which was also my wedding. Imagine, a lot of nerves, stress and the only way to vent was to listen to Archgoat and Ad Mortem’s demo for a whole summer.
Since that demo, I have been following the band’s development through their releases and trying to get hold of any audio-visual material from their live appearances, and have witnessed a development from a band with a well-layered musical base to a band who have refined their style while clearly managing to be consistent in their ideas and aesthetics, and who can become a possible contender for the top of the German underground crown.
I won’t lie, it’s a very familiar sound if you’re into Finnish Black Metal and germans are notorious for having a fetish for the sounds of Perkele Land. In fact Ad Mortem’s Black Metal is Steelfest material. There is nothing new invented here, but still; the freshness on their compositions is what I admire on Ad Mortem. Melodies are always catchy and remind me that in Black Metal either you’re touched by the black flame and make consistent stuff or you just release very forgettable and irrelevant music. Ad Mortem has this black flame, this touch; this unexplainable thing that only a few musicians are gifted with to delight us with. You know, you can play music and you CAN PLAY music. The feeling, a sentiment wrapped in an atmosphere that carries you somewhere. And this is kind of universal for music in general, but what I find captivating about Black Metal is how this genre can evoke so many emotional dimensions. This is where I really enjoy Ad Mortem and their very unique melodies, transporting me somewhere deep inside me where I am forced to metamorphose in a Kafkian way to confront the true self that we hide daily for the wageslave mundane life. That very unique moment when you are just you, without masks or mirrors, stripped of any superficial distracting energy and you are just you.
Tracks like ‘Labyrinth’, for example, are so uplifting that it is easy to get caught up and carried away by the energy of the music. I find it quite brilliant when people manage to provoke that. Music with essence. With something to say, something to convey that is more than just a song.
I mentioned the melodies, which are outstanding this time on ‘In Honorem Mortis’, and these are my friends, usually a guitar work. But in this album it would be totally unfair to attribute it to a single instrument work, because this band functions by being a whole package in itself, where the drumming, the vocals and the bass layers all work together to form a single entity. Now, this is something that only a few manage to get absolutely right. The whole thing as one. A single entity.
Wrapping up, “Labyrinth” i mentioned, the epicness of the closing track ‘Death and Beyond’, the punch in the face of ‘Von hohen Himmelm’, even the synth moment in the intro, which is good but can be better; so many incredible moments packed into one album. I don’t like to do reviews that go song by song and album has so many memorable moments that ring a wide range of emotions that i could be writting a wall of text, like I said, you just have to listen and enjoy for yourself. I think this is good, so good that I would feel totally ashamed to be so audacious as to rate this album with a number when I am totally incompetent to produce a single melody as good as the many that ‘In Honorem Mortis’ contains. Absolutely recommended.
And for the record, I have listened to ‘In Honorem Mortis’ in various sources and formats. I have the cassette, the vinyl and the mp3. Vinyl is a banger, the tape edition is simply amazing, but tape sound is tape sound, love it or hate it. Do yourself a favour, get the vinyl or get some good headphones for your portable devices. Totally changes the listening experience if the source is good.
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