Review Dodsferd / Mortovatis - “Until Your World Go Down” (2010)
For those that can’t wait for the release of Greek black metal horde Dodsferd’s upcoming full-length, the band has given us a small taste of what’s to come in the form of the Until Your World Go Down split. Dodsferd’s portion contains two unreleased tracks and one live recording, while Mortovatis, a side-project of Dodsferd mainman Wrath, contributes one lengthy track of experimental black metal.
The two Dodsferd tracks are both pretty decent and demonstrate Dodsferd’s ability to write captivating and varied black metal. Opener ‘Only Thorns Can Embrace Your Condemned Throne’ is raw, stripped-down punk-influenced black metal, although it mixes in some nice melodic bits here and there. Wrath switches gears for the next track, ‘Another Two of Your Scars and the World is Dead’, which is a soul-crushing, suicidal BM composition reminiscent of Shining or Bethlehem. The stylistic versatility and overall quality of the two tracks point to Dodsferd’s next full-length being a very interesting album indeed. The third Dodsferd track on the split is a live recording of ‘You Called It Resurrection; I Call It Fairytale For Human Parasites, Your Kind,’ and the recording quality is so awful that even if you know the song it’s probably going to be exremely difficult to make out what’s going on.
Mortovatis seems to be the typical experimental side-project that appeals more to the musicians themselves than any of us fans. The twenty-minute track ‘Rebirth 349′ is largely just Wrath playing around with noise and feedback, with arcing, swelling layers of noise accompanied by a dirge-like drum beat. Some guitars appear toward the end, but there’s so little variation over the course of the song’s playing time that one’s patience tends to wear thin fairly quickly. It’s effective on a certain level, but probably not the kind of thing I would listen to on a regular basis. Then again I’m not really a huge fan of drone and noise acts, so there’s a chance that perhaps fans of Merzbow and the like will find Mortovatis appealing.
