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MØRKETIDA
Panphage Mysticism

Werewolf (2018)
Rating: 6/10

The country of Finland continues to produce high quality extreme metal acts, Laitila residents Mørketida being the latest team to explore the murky world of black metal.

Excluding an intro and an outro, debut offering Panphage Mysticism brings six songs to the table. The trio of blackened souls behind such slabs are very much disciples of Satanic Warmaster and the likes as their evil bouts of speed and drudgery set about rusting the ears through such dank and pungent divisions in the form of tracks such as ‘Invoking The Seventh Moon’.

‘Invoking The Seventh Moon’ starts out as a horrid clank before the arrival of the black metal scathe; the guitar tone is nifty yet somehow haunting in its journey through those stuffy drums, but as the pace quickens so we are introduced to the vile, dissonant gasps of the vocals. Clearly sang from a separate tundra, such outbursts are mere echoes of horror to accompany the otherworldly clamour produced by the rest of the sorry gathering as they conjure up demonic beings and clouds of black swirling smoke, both of which leave a vile metallic taste in the mouth of the listener.

Slower passages are eerily mesmeric; bringing us into the gloomscape horizon of ‘Witchcraft’ with its spooky, slow-burning chimes and jingles – again the air is haunted by those effective guitar sprinkles and simplistic percussive patterns which provide flighty yet funeral threads. The fiery pace comes at the halfway stage, but there’s still that focus on the haunting style rather than an in-your-face bestial attack.

‘Serpent’s Grail’ barely ups the pace from the previous wave, although it’s still a standard yet stark black metal drizzle – the percussion having the impact of a snowball on a brick wall. The steadiness nevertheless works while other instruments work together, and yet they rarely jab or prod. Instead, the mesh formed is one of sullen conjecture.

With ‘Throne Of Unseen’, it’s still that same now all too familiar formula just with extra padding and yet still melancholic in its venture, the band refusing by now to step away from type as the fires are stoked with steady persuasion and yet bereft of any spikiness.

The title track takes an age to escape from its initial stark trickle, but there’s something menacing in the trudge. By the point the band are clearly having obscure spectral liaisons with all and sundry; the music now a mere murky waft without the requirement of vocals.

‘Temple Of Prevailing Darkness’ signals the end of the album, but it’s the same now rather uneventful plod that requires some patience to stick with. After 42 seconds though, we get a sudden rush of wind… or fire… the band jerking to life from their frozen casings to deliver a supercharged but still very remote blizzard blur. And that’s all she wrote.

Mørketida come across as a rather bleak and at times one-dimensional drab attack, the actual ‘Intro’ and ‘Outro’ providing the only real suspense or punch in what is otherwise a hypnotic-cum-boring black-doom snoozefest that promises to deliver but ends up being a rather damp squib due to its inability to shift gears in the fog.

Neil Arnold

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