Dödsrit - Mortal Coil

 

Key Facts

Country: 🇸🇪/🇳🇱

Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal

Release Date: 28th May 2021

Record Label(s): Wolves Of Hades Records

Band Members

Christoffer Öster - Guitar, Vocals

Jelle Soolsma - Bass

Brendan Duffy - Drums

Georgios Maxouris - Guitars, Vocals

Dödsrit - Shallow Graves

Review

Rating (out of 5🤘): 🤘🤘🤘🤘

Favourite Track(s): Shallow Graves, Apathetic Tongues, The Third Door

Bursting out of Sweden with a crushing crust infused black metal sound, Dödsrit capture the bleak and haunting eeriness of the Swedish northern darkness with their intensely rich and atmospheric album Mortal Coil. The album is building on the intensely bleak sound that the band established on 2018's sophomore effort Spirit Crusher, however Mortal Coil brings a more aggressive and visceral listening experience. With eerily optimistic melodies over the writhing and tumultuous chaos of the black metal rhythms and chords, there is a great sense of inner reflection entwined in this album. The sombre and melancholic realities of being a mere mortal are made prevalent through sweeping riffs and pounding blast beats. 

The album as a whole conjures up bleak and harrowing emotions within the listener, the overbearing weight of existence and the pain of our past sorrows overwhelm us through the medium of atmospheric black metal. It has been a while since a truly apathetic and misanthropic black metal album has come along that isn't in the guise of DSBM. The loneliness and isolation in the lyrics reinforces this theme of being disgusted with the how long you've held on to the harrowing past but also seeing no light or hope of escape at the end of the tunnel. By combining rich, textural atmospheric elements with choppy and biting rawness, Dödsrit build haunting and harrowing soundscapes with ease. The dynamic variation in The Third Door alone is enough to have you ebbing and flowing with the album's hostile and cold approach. The melodies are the album's most defining feature, they contrast somewhat with the lyrical themes, sounding more melancholic, and in a way happier than what is being screamed over it. With this in mind, it adds to the endless tension and eeriness yet helping to build the atmospheric grandeur, as if you are wandering endlessly through a lonely and isolated landscape where not one other soul is to be found. With each song averaging ten minutes in length it feels like one long journey to nowhere but with the most beautifully mournful soundtrack to accompany it. Putting the haunting prospect of the world dying around us into a very visceral perspective. The album is finely balanced between ruthless discordance and elegant melody, and nothing demonstrates this more than the album's title track, Mortal Coil. The song is somewhat metaphoric for the turbulence that we all experience through life and how it may weigh us down significantly. With slow half-time drums pounding the listener alongside the staccato chords, lofty and ornate melodies are allowed to spin a web of melancholy over the bombastic nature of the song. These two contrasting elements come together and somehow manages to be graceful. There is also an old school Swedish black metal edge to the album, this is best demonstrated on Apathetic Tongues with it's Dark Funeral-esque melody and mournful chord rhythms tinged with harrowing anger. Overall the album delivers, a haunting example of something that may be missing in some atmospheric black metal these days. The album makes you feel cold, isolated and pondering the sad state of the world in which we are left to room. 

Pairing the conceptual and musical depth up with semi-lofi production really adds a significant resonance. The cleanness and reverberation of the melodies off the walls of the abyss, with the backdrop of fuzzy, distortion gives the album a textural depth that amplifies the mournful nature of the music. The lead tones stand out immediately as they cut through the mix with a devastating clarity, utilising a very precise reverb they are able to really emphasis the sombre and melancholic melody of the lead guitars. The rhythm guitars are raw and dirty, occasionally sounding choppy (mainly on The Third Door). The mids are really prevalent, which steers away from that traditional treble driven sound, which is refreshing as it doesn't clash with the cleaner lead tones. The bass is allowed to really romp underneath all of the aforementioned elements, thick and heavy, the distortion augments the rhythm guitar tones to make this impressive wall of sound whilst still being intensely atmospheric. The kick drum feels a little overpowered in some areas, but mostly drives through the mix effectively. The snare has a really nice crunch to it, while the cymbals dominate the high end as the shatter and crash over the guitars. The vocals have an interesting presence, not quite in the front of the mix but in the middle so it adds an extra like an instrument would. Overall, the mix is perfect for the music; dark and brooding, sharp in the right areas but never clashing. All that in mind adds emphasis to the relentless maelstrom of grief, suffering and pain in the conceptual themes. 

If you fancy some mournful and sorrow filled atmospheric black metal that explores the feeble and dying world, Mortal Coil is out on 28th May.