Review Summary: The Sound of Purgatory
Approaching an album like
De Mysteriis Dom Christi for analysis raises more questions than said analysis could ever hope to answer. The title is an obvious play on a revered genre stable mate, which given Reverorum Ib Malacht’s newfound faith in Christ, could be interpreted as anything from an affront to mere tongue-in-cheek homage. A cursory glance at the album’s content further complicates the picture. Is
De Mysteriis Dom Christi a sincere exploration of black metal’s truisms in their most extreme forms? Or is it a superb parody of the scene at large, revelling in its unadulterated grimness to the point of absurdity? Further bemusement will arise from the band’s rather unconventional method of distribution, with each of the album’s respective formats set to garner reactions rather inconsistent with one another. The whole thing
reeks of gimmickry, while simultaneously reeking of brilliance.
The overall sound of
De Mysteriis Dom Christi skirts a fine line between endearing, almost-comical spookiness and a genuinely malicious aural assault. Forgoing any sense of clarity, the instruments bleed into one another like an atmospheric miasma of noise. Guitar and bass lines seem to function as sonic background props, while the sporadically present drumming does its best to loosely tie everything together. Catchy refrains and instrumental hooks are nowhere to be found, as everything coalesces into a nebulous single entity, at times more reminiscent of dark ambient than black metal. The album is a rarity in that the core instrumentation plays a supplementary role to the vast array of accents that contribute to the harrowing atmosphere, as opposed to the other way around. All manner of synthesisers, chanting, feedback, organs and church bells completely smother the elements of black metal into coercion, and the result is something akin to a live performance in a haunted cathedral, recorded from afar while standing in a long, dark hallway.
Amazingly, the album’s biggest peculiarity is not the tumultuous sound, but rather the conflicting impressions that will come from folks having listened to it on different mediums. Reverorum Ib Malacht have chosen to release three separate versions for cassette, CD and vinyl, each complete with unique compositions and track lists but sharing underlying themes and motifs abroad. Musical similarities are scarcely apparent at first, but eventually reveal themselves, with the most obvious being the rhythm section of “Domini Est Terra” reappearing in the early stages of both the cassette and vinyl editions. Perhaps the cleverest aspect of this format split is that each version seems to have been modelled to reflect the sonic properties of their physical mediums. The cassette version is the most repetitious in terms of composition, while also being the flattest and harshest in terms of sound. By comparison, the CD is laced with digital sound effects, while the vinyl makes tremendous use of dynamic shifts, striking a middle ground between the other two, aesthetically.
No matter the intentions of the artists behind
De Mysteriis Dom Christi, it’s safe to say that it should be taken with a grain of salt. Too enigmatic to be seen as a candid artistic statement, too meticulous to be dismissed as a caricature, the album’s appeal comes from a profound sense of ambiguity, communicated via soundscapes so bizarre they need to be heard to be believed.
