MORTUUS – GRAPE OF THE VINE LP (The Ajna Offensive)

Abandon all hope ye who enter here. Not that Black Metal fanatics have much hope to begin with. If you do, however, ‘Grape Of The Vine’ will crush it. This is a bleak, despondent, harrowing journey into the psyche of death and existence; a monologue of despair; an ode to emptiness.

So monotonous and dreary the delivery of the seven sermons hereon that I genuinely feel like ending it all as I listen along. Which, of course, is a great thing because life is pointless and futile, right? Damn, Sweden must be even more depressing than Ireland…

Slow- to mid-paced and deliberately – like life itself – lacking any kind of notable variation on the omnipresent drone (save perhaps the uttered lines at the start of ‘Disobedience’), Mortuus’s second full-length is a resounding success in everything it aims to achieve. The soundtrack to a shattered existence, it could perhaps be interpreted as Shining without the theatrics.

The record itself is almost 50-minutes long and a splendid 7” booklet with abject lyrics presented to the mundane masses seals a truly despairing deal.

Evilometer: 666/666