While it’s unhealthy to try drill into a rich seam of depression and self-loathing, mine it and milk it then wallow in it, sometimes those sort of dark moods are just unavoidable. For nigh-on six years, Gnaw Their Tongues, a solo project of Dutch polymath Mories, has deconstructed black metal, adding avant-industrial elements and haunting soundscapes to provide a go-to soundtrack for those dark nights of the soul. Shit, it’s almost like Mories has gleaned some bespoke intelligence into his audience and our respective torment and misdemeanors, like how on the money was the title to 2007 compilation Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Empyting, Vomiting with regards to documenting your bi-weekly über-anxiety hangover. Spooky. But Gnaw Their Tongues is not just for the crestfallen, those moments of defeat; for an abstract horror experience Morie’s oeuvre is essential listening, especially on those days when you can’t be doing with regimented blastbeats, riffs and screaming and all the de rigueur extreme metal fare.
Anyway, Mories has just scored a new nightmare, available through Crucial Blast here, and we’ve got it streaming below, just in time to put the breaks on your Van Halen pre-weekend serotonin drive and focus your mind on the unending slew of misery that is modern life.
Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus
On initial spins Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus is more carnal, less majestic than last year’s superlative L’Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante. Loosely translated as “with blood and whip, we worship the dark”, Per Flagellum sees Mories cover a lot of ground in pretty much puking out the vocals, like on opener “Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei”, bringing in kettle-drums and adding weird schizoid blasts; the sum of which makes for a disorientating, nauseating, listen-with-the-lights-on auditory experience that’s bordering on the hallucinatory.
It’s not for everyone, and that’s cool because nothing ever worthwhile is, but what makes Gnaw Their Tongues great is that it’s always genuinely disturbing, and any music with the power to unsettle and blacken your soul has to come with our highest recommendation.
