Skip to main content

Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater
Northern Heritage – 2009 


Heavier and darker than his other projects, Stabat Mater is Mikko diving into the desolate lands of funeral doom. The album kicks off with crushing chuggs, which evolve into incredibly dirty sludge riffs. The production is very lofi, giving the guitars that beautiful crunch, and giving power to the deep, rythmic bellowing of the lower strings. Any attempts at melody are beaten by the overbearing chuggs, and when all hope seems lost, synths come into play.

Synths are notoriously hard to get right in metal, as often cheapening the entire sound for just a couple of seconds is enough to sour an album. Genres such as funeral doom are more forgiving, and Mikko allows himself some electronic experimentation, which ends up being a great addition to the personality of the album. Long, droning, high-pitched synth notes give breathing space and a distant glimmer of hope. It's actually nice to hear the guitars and synths to play off of each other from time to time, almost like two musicians jamming to create the soundtrack of a murder victim's funeral. Thanks in part to the low tempo, the riffs have lots of empty space waiting to be filled by keyboard wails and unclean solos.

The bass was notable during this album, coming out of the mix as a separate instrument – while it did have a supporting rôle, it accomplished it in ways that many bass players don't, with more than just root notes on 4ths. Even outside of the rare fills, there was enough to keep my attention for most of my second listen. A quick mention goes to the opera samples, accompanied by a menacing guitar background, the latter of which was subtly written and effective as a mood-setter.




Giuseppe Fitzsimmons
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sulphurous - Dolorous Death Knell

Sulphurous – Dolorous Death Knell December 2018 – Dark Descent Records 90s revival and cavernous death metal started gaining popularity about two years ago, with bands such as Phrenelith and Pissgrave being propelled into quasi-mainstream success thanks to a couple of public figures introducing their audiences to an otherwise relatively underground facet of death metal. Dark Descent Records have certainly capitalized on said revival, signing giants of the genre like Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, and previously Chthe’ilist (and Mitochondrion to a certain degree). As with any other cavernous death metal record, the production is the first thing you’ll notice – it’s all suffocated, as if the amps were draped in thick curtains. Few effects and no triggers are applied to the drums, giving the whole package a very live/practice room aspect. Despite the apparent muddiness of Dolorous Death Knell, everything’s quite audible – even the lower registers somehow retain ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kataplexia – The Rise of the Unknown

Kataplexia – The Rise of the Unknown January 2019 – Rotten Music Kataplexia is Finland's best Indonesian brutal death metal band. You read that right, Indonesian is now a valid qualifier for brutal death metal. For those unaware, I explored and wrote about the Southeast Asian brutal death metal scene two years ago, discovering a gigantic scene with an uncharacteristic public acceptance. One of the members of Jasad began a side-project, Kaluman, which is the definition of high-quality Southeast Asian brutal death metal. A couple seconds into Kataplexia's latest, I expected to see Rottervore or Extreme Souls as their label, as every element pointed towards Indonesian origins – the tone, production, vocals, riffs and even album art all felt like Ferli Suferli (Jasad, Kaluman) was behind the project, yet Helsinki is listed as their base of operations. Admittedly, there's only so much one can actually say about the music without endless comparisons. A modern ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Uboa, the interview

UG You’ve gone over the “Jouissance” title in the past. Would you mind going over Coma Wall? It’s got quite grave and final undertones. First, Coma Wall has no totalised meaning for me, but death of the author could suggest otherwise. But there are themes. The Coma Wall, also known as the CfA2 Great Wall, is a galactic filament - thread-like structures composed millions of galaxies - of and one of the largest structures in the observable universe. It’s 750 million ly high x 200 million ly in width x 16 million ly in thickness. There are few structures bigger than it before you get to the “End of Greatness”, where the universe no longer is seen in discernible structures (filaments and voids, which combined look awfully organic, almost like clusters of interconnected neurones) and you get undifferentiated noise, like static on a TV or white noise. Basically, in cosmology, there seems to be an upper limit to how big things get before the universe seems to become pure undifferentia...
Post a Comment
Read more