As you might have noticed, I took the month of July off from writing an installment of DE. The reason being is that nothing seemed to crawl its way across my desk that I found inspiring enough to write a column about. Now, don’t get me wrong, I work with a ton of great labels that send me killer releases on a regular basis, just take a look at some of the reviews I’ve written lately for proof. But, I had been wanting to take this column back to its roots, which are obviously in black metal, and quite frankly nothing I’d heard recently in the BM department was really getting me excited enough to stoke the fires of a new installment of Dethroned Emperor.
That is, until I received a package from Transcendental Creations containing Migdal Bavel, the latest release from one-man black metal terrorist De Magia Veterum. The album is a sickening swarm of the most unholy blackened noise you’ve ever heard, like listening to Merzbow jam with Ildjarn and Filosofem-era Varg Vikernes while they get fist-f**ked by Lucifer. Everything on Migdal Bavel is buried under a thick black layer of utterly corrosive distortion. The song structures are pure chaos-theory, careening tremolo-picked melodies degenerate into scathing washes of pure white noise. A drum machine pulsates in the background, attempting to keep time but ultimately only adding to the album’s swirling, destructive dementia. The vocals are a disturbing, drainpipe distorto-howl reminiscent of Xasthur’s Malefic but even more inhuman sounding, if such a thing is possible.
Continue reading ‘Dethroned Emperor #22 (De Magia Veterum and the realms of black noise)’
