2023-08-27 14:18:00
With a freshly landed signature on the prestigious Canadian label Profound Lore Records, it’s a safe bet that MIZMOR alias “ALN” opens the doors of a recognition, at least of an exhibition, broader than that where was confined until then. Yet his three albums, with a special mention for “Cairn” released in 2019, had already revealed in their time a solitary musician capable of uniting in stunning mastery the best in black and doom metal.
And in this register, the native of Portland is a cador. A cador who, from the first minutes of “Only An Expanse”, has no equal in sending a creeping and vicious appetizer as he knows how to do so well: a quarter of an hour in hell. “No Place To Arrive” announces a heavy rhythmic storm, a kind of heavy doom blackened by sadness and abnegation, of those which his compatriots USNEA and HELL also love. The latter, also natives of Oregon, do wonders in terms of well-tarred metal. The air must be particularly stale in this northwestern state of the United States to concentrate so much darkness in the souls. Like the disturbing tremolos of the monstrous “Anything But” and its eight minutes of icy beauty, this famous darkness never leaves the listener throughout these painful forty-six minutes. As if the heaviness were sufficient unto itself, crushing the listener with all its weight, depriving him of all hope of emerging victorious.
Illustrated by Dylan Proteau, also at work on the artwork of BELL WITCH’s first album, and masterfully produced by this same ALN and Sonny Diperri in the mixing that has accompanied it since its very beginnings, “Prosaic” is a work imposing. From this same production, tarry like a packet of Gauloises Corporal, which you have to have heard at least once to believe it. And also by its power of black seduction which insidiously hits the mark, one listen leading to another. Then another. And yet another…
About the author
Clément
Clément had his metallic revelation during a class trip to Germany, somewhere in 1992, with a HARD FORCE magazine in one hand and his walkman screaming “Fear of the Dark” in the other. Since then, not a day goes by without a more or less saturated guitar coming to cheer up his esgourdes! Being also not very good at mastering an instrument, it was towards writing that he turned a little later by creating with two friends a first fanzine, “Depths of Decadence” and then collaborating for ten years at Decibels Storm, then VS-Webzine. Since 2016, it is on HARD FORCE that he “rages” where he breaks the ears of the editorial staff with the section “Labels and the Beasts”… among others!
His other publications
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#MIZMOR #Prosaic