Asheville, North Carolina outfit Mo’ynoq have spent the last decade dispelling the myth that black metal only comes out of the frozen north, infusing their brand of USBM with an atmosphere that recalls their home in the southern United States. Three years after their last release, 2022’s A Place for Ash, Mo’ynoq are back in action and they brought friends, fellow Asheville black metal trio Urocyon.
Both sides of the split have a distinctly American sound, drawing their influences from USBM stalwarts Krallice, Ash Borer and Nachtmystium. Listeners seeking tight, no-bullshit black metal will find a lot to appreciate on Mo’ynoq and Urocyon’s new split, which you can stream below ahead of its April 18 independent release. Decibel also spoke with both bands to get deeper insight into the writing and recording process.
It’s been roughly three years since either band released new music. Have both of you been working on these songs since your last release?
Mo’ynoq: Sorta. This band typically writes as a collective so pieces of these songs had been floating around our rehearsal space for several months, but it wasn’t until we had this split as a goal that they were fully developed.
Urocyon: We have. Our songwriting process is a bit slow due to responsibilities in our personal lives, and we can also be perfectionists. The Sentient Curse was originally written for our old band, Shadow of the Destroyer, but we never recorded it and only played it live once before we disbanded. Urocyon decided to exhume and rework it for our three-piece setup, which took some time to master.
How did this split come to be? Are Urocyon and Mo’ynoq just two bands that exist in close proximity to one another?
Mo’ynoq: We’ve been discussing doing a split with those dudes since before Urocyon’s former project, Shadow of the Destroyer, disbanded. When Dave Kaminsky joined on guitar in November of 2023, this became a way for us to learn to write together and collaborate with our Appalachian boys simultaneously.
Urocyon: We became good friends with Mo’ynoq around 6 or 7 years ago through our old band, so they were excited and supportive when Urocyon came to be. We live across the state from each other, but play shows together as often as we can and have talked about doing a split together for years; it just took a while to come to fruition.
Urocyon, this is only your second release. Do you still feel like you’re finding your musical identity?
Urocyon: To be honest, not really. The three of us have been playing music together since 2011, so we had a pretty solid idea of what we wanted to do with Urocyon.
What are the songs on this split about? Are the two sides thematically related?
Mo’ynoq: Our songs on this split expand on a lot of the themes we generally focus on: individual suffering and abnegation as a means of grappling with the things that are beyond our control. Our mutual motivation for this split was to showcase black metal from North Carolina while working with our friends.
Urocyon: No, there’s no theme between each band’s songs. That would’ve been cool, but the main reasons behind doing this split were to do a release with friends’ bands that we both love and to highlight NCBM in general. Our songs are both essentially about man’s wanton destruction of the earth and its eventual inevitable ecological collapse.”
