Depressive Suicidal Black Metal can fuck off. There’s absolutely no need to diminish beautiful music with errant psychological labels. It’s all about the music you see and not the stress these sounds might have on you in accordance with some distinctive marketing ploy. When you let go of the intention genre labels implicate you might see the wood for the city of Ypres.
The new Mist of Misery album has a lot of depth within its luxurious arrangements and thus transcends the liberal superficiality of the DSBM genre. While active nihilism has been a problematic for capitalists trying to rationalise metadata for decades now, by entertaining ideas unpalatable to the mass market psyche, we can gain perspective on an ideology that most have come to expect as instruction.
Absence is a stirring and thoughtful piece that blends classical compositions faithfully with the erratic and aberrant techniques of black metal. The songs themselves are practiced with melancholy in mind but they move to inspire without attempting any emotional subjugation.
The compositions are manipulated by the many colours from the orchestration samples to really impress a sense of grandeur. It might just be a backing track but the programming adds a ghostly layer and classy subcontext to the horrific guitar tones (horrific in a good way.) The dynamics of which really make a startling contrast to the guitars acoustics.
With a solemn head and the blackest heart these tracks thunder on with only the finest expression where the emotive riffs are played with open candor and echo the lyrics that are inspired by the will to power dynamic Nietzsche discussed. Evoking complex emotions to call these reflections sadness would be a great injustice.
The second full-length from Swedish trinity Mist of Misery, Absence, is a golden ticket to nowhere in particular. Innovating new music with the emotionally provocative spirit and empowering philosophy that may perhaps assist in triggering a musical epiphany. Yet those event are up to you as the listener. Mist of Misery are just a band who write music. Life affirming music, but just music, as whimsical as the winds that carry the seeds of change.
10/10
