LES MORTS VONT VITE

Created by a band named after one of my buddies, this album is literally a musical monster that's as enjoyable as it is harsh & eerie. If you feel the need to horde the candy on Halloween without leaving the house, blast this album out of your windows. Unlike heavy metal stuff, which would just annoy passerbys until the cops arrived to force you to shut off that racket, Les Morts Vont Vite would probably give the little kids patrolling outside in their Spiderman and fairy costumes horrendous nightmares. The candy in a bowl by the front door would be all yours, although none of the neighbors would invite you to their cookouts the following summer.

An extremely dark and oppresive atmosphere spreads throughout the body and mind like the fungi from Yuggoth: a throbbing distorted bass, an odd-toned soprano, sheets of guitar "sounds" that invoke aural representations of shoggoths, trombones providing haunting melodies accented by weird piano passages and creepy organ moans. The effect is disconcerting and actually quite "heavy" without being "metal", but I find it also captivating and memorable. It's not something to hum along to, but the menacing opening melody of Incipit Tragaedia is pretty catchy, and this close to 16 minute creature remains interesting throughout its duration. The last portion of Yog Sothoth (which, of course, is one of the greatest song titles of all time thank you very much) is mind blowing, with Ann Stewart chanting the song title in multiple tracks over that monstrous bass, like a subterranean death bell aknowledging the successful conjuration of an Ancient One. The album's other long track, La Ballade De Lénore, begins with a chilling organ and haunted, almost detached operatic vocals as gloomy forebearer of what would suddenly morph into miasmic guitar chaos and desperate drumming...a kind of psycho jazz at times.

Every song here has its share of memorable moments, and remains a dark twisted entity that burrows in the mind from the opening dirge to the final crawling chaos of the last track. I've never found myself tired of this particular work, and rank it among one of my personal favorites in my collection. It's that rare piece of music that's both dissonant and beautiful that sends the listener into the insane world of the Black Goat In The Woods With A Thousand Young.

Iä! Shub-Niggurath!