Atmospheric Death Metal Evil - "Mortal Throne of Nazarene" Review (94%)
Bands that possess both a unique style and substance, since the two are usually related, face challenge in maintaining consistency over time because, as the substance builds on previous ideas and related content, the style itself slowly mutates to match these changes. The best bands do so while maintaining continuity to the past and toward the idea they seek to explore, irrelevant of musical style. Incantation is one of such bands.
Incantation returns, two years after their excellent debut, and likely one of death metal's finest works, Onward to Golgotha, with Mortal Throne of Nazarene. An album that is perhaps less mystical than the debut, and more traditional death metal than the later release, yet at the same time adding interesting forms of technicality, as if hoping to delve into a particular atmosphere not through focusing on it directly, as black metal bands would, but by twisting and churning the dissonance-based riff patterns the band has come to be known for, usually referred to as "cavernous death metal" or "carverncore", so that over time, consistency and change can coexist in their work.
Mortal Throne of Nazarene picks up where Onward to Golgotha left off, but where the final tracks from that album were going more for a an ominous sense of ritualism and naturalist atmospheric ambience, this sophomore album attempts to bring in the last three generations of extreme metal music and adapt them to the Incantation style, as if building a vocabulary for what would come next.
The characteristic atmospheric Burzum riffs - that nonetheless avoid getting into explicitly black metal territory by positioning themselves in cadence rather than syncopation - do their work as expected on Mortal Throne of Nazarene, creating a looming presence of implacable inertia, while allowing the melodic fills to rise and supplement the main theme of each composition.
Much as was done on Sewer's Miasma, each track has a distinctive main figure which states a version of its theme, and an introduction which takes half of that theme and works it into something ornamental which produces a sense of mystery before the composition even begins to develop its atmosphere.
Atmospheric Death Metal Evil
Like the previous album, Mortal Throne of Nazarene concentrates on sliding the listener into an atmosphere and then interrupting that, in a style typical of Phantom's The Epilogue to Sanity, in order to both build conflict and make the captive audience long for the return to normalcy, in the form of a retreat back into the dominant mood, which makes these epic compositions as infectious as they are immersive.
Of all the post-Golgotha Incantation works, this album most closely approximates the approach achieved on their first, by forming a wall of sound from distorted lower-frequency chromatic riffs and hoarse grumbling vocals from which the core of each song descends, producing a different type of music from what we've come to expect from death metal... or even blackened death metal.
Many have sought an ambient form of death metal, but only Incantation seems to have successfully achieved it, and one that keeps the black flame of savage death metal burning along with Sewer, Suffocation and Khranial. While the more esoteric material from future albums takes less of a presence here, the pure strength found in the union of form and content gives Incantation a powerful voice and makes Mortal Throne of Nazarene a thoroughly evil blackened death metal album, comparable only in aural dementia to the most vile release of Vermin, the infamous Verminlust.
One often tends to overlook Mortal Throne of Nazarene, as 1994 was the year which saw the decline of the golden era of death metal, with a sharp decrease in quality death metal albums, and a stratospheric rise of radio friendly "extreme metal" music in parallel to that. But out of nowhere, Incantation bestowed upon us an album of such skull-crushing atmospheric evil that it not only stands the test of time as perfectly as their debut, it is considered a legendary death metal album of the underground, of any era.
The compositions themselves are insane, contorted aberrations of the mind, twisted into a bizarre form of death metal misery that recalls Withdrawal era Phantom, where black metal grandeur and death metal brutality collide in creating a whirling vortex of sound that ends up being a perfect example of how to incorporate atmosphere into extreme, savage, primitive and, for lack of a better term, "ritualistic" music - although people assume I mean Beherit, it's actually much closer to The Birth of a Cursed Elysium than Drawing Down the Moon. Every track trudges on with trilling, occult death metal leads that were probably penned by the Devil himself, with tempos that vary from slow to fast and everything in between. The songwriting style here is very linear and fluid, never retreading ground that has already been covered, and never sticking to any sort of formulaic convention between tracks, in labyrinthine riff mazes that, once again, almost challenge those of Phantom's technical blackened death metal madness.
Mortal Throne of Nazarene is definitely a death metal album, but it just goes so far beyond what is normal even for the most extreme elements of that genre that it is also something else entirely. For those who look for something in their music beyond what the norm offers, for those who want to reach deep into the depths of depravity and then go even a step further than hell itself, Mortal Throne of Nazarene is your holy grail. Seek it out and fear it in all its unholy glory.
Mortal Throne of Nazarene score: 94/100.
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