Standard jewel case edition.
Murder Rape's third album is miles away from its predecessors. While the demo, the first and second albums were more doom-oriented, with slow, dragging songs; this one features rispid, straight-to-the-point songs that are fast and aggressive as hell. Lyrically it's the same as the band's first attempts, focusing on the hatred for christianity and the intention of seeing it and its followers destroyed, eliminated.
The departure of drummer Ichthys Niger (replaced by Dagorlad) might have had something to do with such drastic change in their musical orientation. When you listen to these songs and compare them to the ones in their previous albums, it's difficult to imagine I. Niger (whose drumming in the demo and 1st album were erratic to say the least and regular in the 2nd one) playing them. Dagorlad could run (or play) rings around the former drummer who, curiously enough, went on to form a band who tried to play very much in the vein of this new direction taken by Murder Rape and which featured MR's former singer and guitar player... go figure.
Well, the opening with "... and Evil Returns" hits you squarely on the head like a ton of lead. No intro, no slow part to set the mood, nothing. It alternates fast, mid-paced and slower parts to create the right opening for the album, exciting the listener enough for what's to come. The songs don't go down the "one-simple-idea-explored-to-boredom" path. Most of them are plainly fast and direct. The music in this album has some minimalistic tones but it doesn't mean lack of ideas or creativity. Ipsissimus's riffs cut like a blade that used to be sharp but's grown rusty and thus more painful and dangerous.
There is only one short slow interlude, the intro to "Mistress of the Gloomy Nights" but it doesn't last long and soon it leads us to a tempestuous slab of mayhem at the speed of hatred. Again, variation is the key, it's not just endless, pointless blasting, but ferocious black metal that grabs your attention with its harsh, catchy melodies. The mixing, which is neither crystal clear to the point of being sterile (and consequently without that "dirty" sound that's necessary for any decent metal album) nor excessively muddy to the point of turning the instruments into an indecipherable blurr helps the listener fully comprehend the band's intention with every song.
The closing comes in the shape of "Z. O. E." (don't ask me what it stands for, there's no mention of it anywhere in the lyrics or liner notes at all). Much slower than the rest of the songs in the album, it reminds us of the first two albums, very depressive and doomy and it's followed by an "Outro", a collage of sounds of wind, crows, morbid sounding keyboards, some guitars and Nargothrond's eery voice reciting Satanic prayers, it sounds interesting enough after such relentless aural assault. The low tuning, the dissonant chords and the melancholic solos help set the overall depressive mood that leaves you one single message: there's no hope at all, only an eternity of cold torment ahead.
To sum it up: great production, stunning artwork (the quality of the printing, the paper, the disc itself are way above average) all serve to back up a great band, with talented musicians (not virtouses, mind you) and able to write great black metal, without compromise.
Sample:
Murder Rape - Evil Shall Burn Inside Me Forever (2001)
