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MOLTEN CHAINS
Orisons Of Vengeance

Alone / Night Rhythms Recordings (2022)
Rating: 8/10

This creepy combo from Vienna in Austria formed back in 2017 and yet they’ve somehow, and criminally too, gone under the radar. However, I’m hoping that this new album, the band’s third, puts them on the map of morbidity, because this really is some atmospherically macabre metal.

Molten Chains is a very intriguing outfit with a sound that comes cloaked in darkness. The line-up consists of Deathromancer (vocals, guitar and bass), Graf Gyula (guitar) and Michi von Rosenkranz (drums).

I’ve played this opus several times and still can’t fully pigeon-hole their sound. Let’s just say that if you went to see a band like Mercyful Fate, or even Ghost, then Molten Chains is the sort of band you’d want supporting.

The band plays a black / thrash style of metal streaked with a doominess and shock rock brooding. However, there’s a peculiar avant-garde feel to the whole album as Molten Chains explores the darkest crypts of horror in order to dredge up their thorny, sinister sound.

Listen to a track such as ‘Bedevilled By Sorrow’ and you’ll see what I mean about this darkly majestic and creepily cryptic cacophony as the vocals shift from evil commands to satanic sneers. And all the while the backdrop of red velvet curtains occasionally throws out mercurial passages of mystery alongside stark, thrashing spikiness.

Opener ‘Hand Of God’ flits towards a black metal-cum-Mercyful Fate orgy of darkness, while ‘Black Mantle’ injects heaps of crunching dissonance, particularly in the grey, icy guitar tone. And that’s where the black thrash lacing is more evident, although it’s never truly remote or abrasive, but the dashes of speed and angular segments suggest a coldness.

This is also evident with the clanking hiss of ‘Communion’, but when the vocals shift to a croon-like bellow it’s only natural to harken back to some of doom metal’s creaking gods, because Deathromancer really does become the black magician here as his smooth yet disconcerting tones soar like ghostly wisps from the flames.

‘Crimson Equinox’ begins with creepy, although, dare I say it, cheesy narration, dragging me back to the halcyon days of UK band Deliverance. Y’know, the sort of esoteric gloominess that ran through the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal scene. But all the while there are those hammering drums, the speeding guitars and a bass that clangs like a death bell.

Molten Chains have clearly tapped into something here and that’s why I’m surprised at their lack of popularity, because as ‘Martyrdom’ rounds this black mass of I can only admire the speed metal rushes, the blackened thrash outbursts and all-round mystifying trickiness.

Orisons Of Vengeance is a concise yet rewarding adventure through foreboding corridors lined with laced veils that flutter like tormented spirits. It’s an album that stirs the imagination and prompts me to sleep with one eye on the crack in the door.

Neil Arnold

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