Tag Archives: Urzeit

Underground Sounds: Mizmor (מזמור) – Yodh

Label: Gilead Media
Band: Mizmor
Origin: United States

I’m a novice to certain local scenes, but sometimes things just hang together so tightly, that figuring out where things come from is tricky. Mizmor’s new album was mostly captivating my attention thanks to the amazing cover, with a huge floating mask. It appears slightly like something from the far east, but there’s also a universal element to it. Musically, this is an overwhelming experience for sure and the cover is bringing that too life.

That looming spectre seems to be something that the band shares with the affiliated Hell, where the entity of the music and the aesthetic become larger than the artist. A.L.N. started the band as Sorceres and later this morphed into Mizmor. A.L.N. is also active in Urzeit and plays in the live line-up of Hell (who crushed at Roadburn this year). All in all, a good resume for a bit of blistering black metal.

A piercing howl breaks through the misty darkness and unleashes a gargantuan sound of blistering black metal with a grinding sound of rhythm instruments. Harsh and deep vocal screams simply erupt and reign down on the listener as fierce abyssal hailstorms. It’s at those moments, when icy howls escape from A.N.L., frontman of Mizmor, that the band truly tickles those hairs on the back of your neck.

The slow, thrudging pace and the buzzing guitar sounds are rather uncanny for the listener, but the whole experienc is ment to be unnerving and different compared to the more traditional genre specific bands. The elements of doom and black metal are combined in an extremely efficient way. The slow, menacing progressions are terrifying and mighty. Big tapestries of distorted guitar, but then also the trickling acoustic elements.

Somewhere in between everything, this album offers a pure cathartic experience. The crawling pace, the deep abbyssal vocals and tormented screams are a true aural embodiment of hell. It pushes the envelope and is almost a soundscape of looming darkness to its perfection. The way a track like ‘Bask in the Lingering’ builds up and then winds down only to rise again is majestic. You just got to love this album.