Polish Duo Misanthur finally reveal their Debut Album Ephemeris
The cover art alone exemplifies what Misanthur represents. Beauty made ugly, via degradation from within and externally, painful yet compelling.
Ephemeris takes elements of industrial torture and ambient drone and combines them with the rapid riffing of black metal to create a wholly unwelcome atmosphere that drips anxiety, fury, and despair. The Serpent Crawls takes spoken word and the ethos of black metal to its extreme, from speed to the sort of stop-start anger that the genre excels in when it brings in some slower elements and the chest pummelling double kicks.
The percussion offsets the ambient drone. Black Clouds & no Silver Linings epitomizes the spiritual apocalypse, Vast soundscapes that represent the void of the conscious, whilst maintaining the musical despair that remains true to the band without veering into self-indulgent DSBM. Dense Mental Trance and its huge slow blackened riffs provide the interlude to the sustained chaos that is On The Heights Of Despair, the spoken word without hope, the screams defining that loss.
Unnerving and intentionally isolationist. Misanthur is a rare find that has taken their time to reveal their musical hell. This is not for the masses as personal atmospheric black metal dripping in disgust was never meant to be.
Four Disturbing Roos
Misanthur: Facebook
Release Year: 2021
Label: Season of Mist Underground Activists
Category: Album
Country: Poland
Reviewed by Sparky
