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BLACK CILICE
Mysteries

Iron Bonehead Productions (2015)
Rating: 6.5/10

What a bloody black metal racket this is. Hard to believe that the mysterious Black Cilice has carved out an entire career based upon this sort of godly din.

No word of a lie, my ears were aching like mad after spinning this new six-track cacophony which boasts the most god awful drum sound, and a general lo-fi demo sound akin to someone driving their car into their garage only to realise that the door is still closed and the garage is still full of junk!

This is a primitive scrap heap of a dissonant black metal album and is the third expression from this Portuguese anomaly which I’m sure must be the work of just one, demented man, who throughout this noisy clattering ram spends his time rattling off a series of grating chords amidst a tinny, “underground” drum sound which occasionally is disturbed by a series of odd echoes and distant moans. It’s almost as if I’ve been stranded on a ship floating aimlessly across a frozen sea and then haunted during the witching hour by a posse of watery ghouls, such are the eerie moans of this venture.

Even so, it’s still partly accessible because there are some rather lo-fi, basement-spawned riffs of icy melody hidden within that fluffy wall of decay and junk. Hey though, no point beating around the rather thorny bush. This is very much grim black metal that just becomes a tad too rattly (sic) on the ears; each track sort of merges into the next as some type of avalanche of pots and pans released from the stuffy confines of a cupboard. The fastest of these is ‘The Truth’, which for six minutes just becomes an unbearable noise.

This isn’t too far removed from the previous racket of ‘Into Morbid Trance’, but this is very much an acquired taste when it comes to black metal; it is indeed all too repetitive for my liking in its urge to become so underground and cult and there appears to be no progression made here from the last opus – 2013’s Summoning The Night – which again was bestowed with those despicable windy howls. Even so, Black Cilice is most certainly black metal that cares not for trends or contemporary experimentation or production; instead, it’s one of those rather haunting gems that exists in some remote nook to the point that many will never find such an abode or indeed may not want to discover it, such is the rather simplistic yet abrasive nature of its own creation.

Mysteries is an obscure, distorted rumpus speckled with some very interesting slower passages, but for the most part existing as a rather alienating, bewildering yet strangely hypnotic storm consisting of blustery gales and the sort of hailstones which leave the ears numb. It’s hard to recommend such a row, but recommend it I will to anyone who wishes to spend the night with a migraine induced by what can only be described as primitive black metal and yet a style bereft of evil, but instead filled to the brim with eerie disharmony.

Neil Arnold

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