Haeresiarchs of Dis – In Obsecration Of The Seven Darks
Haeresiarchs of Dis – In Obsecration Of The Seven Darks CD (Moribund)
Haeresiarchs of Dis is the one-man avant-garde black metal solo project of a man calling himself Cernunnos, hailing from the sunny climes of California instead of the frozen landscape of Norway so often associated with traditional black metal. This isn’t the only thing that distinguishes Haeresiarchs of Dis from his peers in the scene. With the boundaries of the genre being blurred constantly with a slew of American black metal from bands like Xasthur. Twilight and Krallice, there is now more room for experimentation in a genre with very set rules and restrictions. In Obsecration Of The Seven Darks isn’t what many would consider to be a true black metal album, but rather an album that starts off using black metal as a template to work on and add experimental ideas to. There is plenty of distorted guitar on the album, but these songs have programmed drums that are very chaotic sounding, and become very distracting from the other elements of the song. The stand out parts of the album come when the more experimental and unexpected songs, come in between the standard set with the more traditional metal tracks. Onward Through The Oculus is an instrumental track with layers of chanted monastic sounding vocals, serving as a welcome interlude between two fairly uninteresting guitar focussed songs. Aut Vincere Aut Mori begins with a slowly picked acoustic guitar building up to a climax where an ominous sounding church organ takes over to provide a very unsettling and discordant atmosphere for the remainder of the song. There are even some elements of the drone-based ambience associated with extremely un-metal bands like Stars Of The Lid that appear towards the end of the song Passage. There are some very promising elements to In Obsecration… but there are too many ideas and sounds being utilised so that the songs all feel like they don’t belong together on the same album. Gareth Moule
