Review Summary: Complaints aside though, I love this album, the atmosphere, the imagery, the brutality and beauty of it, there is so much to like on this album, even if it is a bit inconsistent, the good parts are really, really good.
"We know what we wanna do and we know how we wanna do it. What differs from album to album though is that we take things further on each and every recording. We just put in more of everything while still maintaining everything that we are about. Brutality, beauty and groove. This is what we are and as long as I’m in this band, this is what we will sound like." Lord K Phillipson - Project Hate
Sometimes, three words can be enough to describe an album, other times words just don't seem to fit, but for In Hora Mortis Nostrae, three words is just enough,
brutality, beauty and groove. I couldn't have summed it up better myself than the quote I used at the beginning of this review. Each of these elements is obvious, but at no point are any of them overpowering in the music, sure, there are times when one is dominant, but it is done in such a way that they just seem to stand out more when the music gets back into it's rhythm. The band seem to have captured just the right mix between technicality, emotion and aggression on this release, and there is just something about it which seems... unique. I'm not quite sure why I picked this album up, the album art drew me in, and like a lot of other albums before it, simply ended up in my hands before I realized what I was doing (no, I didn't steal it). And as I did when I first encountered
Graveworm, I trusted my instincts and got it, with no regrets. Now, on to the music.
The Project Hate throw down a lot of riffs, and I mean a lot, each song is crammed full of different musical ideas and melodies that it is hard to keep up with, yet that is where a lot of the appeal lies. In Hora Mortis Nostrae invites repeated listens to let it all sink in, with seven songs averaging around nine minutes, In Hora Mortis Nostrae demands a lot from the listener, but it is worth it. The drumming is powerful, skilled, and at some points, incredibly technical, and some of the fastest footwork I have heard on any album. Another high point is the bass, reasonably loud in the mix and pounding with the guitars rather than being drowned out by them, it gives the music a even heavier sound than it would have had without it. But aside from all of this,
the single most impressive thing about this album (and the band) are the vocals.
From powerful guttural roars to emotional, soft singing from the female vocalist, the vocal style moulds itself to the atmosphere created by the music, helping give it a unique, memorable sound which sticks in your head for long after the songs end. The growls and screams are impeccably good on here, and their vocalist has quickly become one of my favourites, with a terrific deep growl which packs enough power to make a set of church nuns submit themselves to the devil, he sets the base for most of the music, but there is plenty of variation in his pitch and delivery. From higher, almost black metal screams to even deeper, brutal growls that come from the depths of hell itself, he certainly delivers on all fronts here. On the other spectrum of
The Project Hate's sounds is Jo, their female vocalist, who instead of sounding weak and vulnerable, sounds
suggesting... evocative even, there are plenty of suggestive moments in the music, with her moaning, they are only vague the first time you hear them (apart from one moment which has Jo groaning passionately in the middle of Serenades of Rotting Flesh! You don't want your wife walking in when you're listening to that...) but over the course of repeated listenings they become more obvious until you realise something.
This is a very dark album.
Sure, the lyrics are blasphemous, and praise the devil. But that doesn't give the music anything new, it's the way they deliver these lyrics that makes the album so much more... well, downright scary than others. There are parts on this that almost freak me out (in a good way), for example, the child wailing while slow, gloomy keyboards play in the background gives a good example of how this album sounds like.
The Project Hate manage to make a lot of 'brutal' death metal bands and blasphemous black metal look slightly immature when placed beside this.
By no stretch of the imagination is this album perfect though, even if the imagery is amazingly well done and most of the music is well played and great to listen to, the changes in tempo and rhythm are
very hard to keep up with, even after you listen to it a few times it still seems slightly overwhelming, and the evil atmosphere this album gives off only really reveals itself after several listens, so if you're not patient with it you will not get the most out of this beast of an album. Probably the worst thing though, is the industrial/techno parts they include. Thank the heavens (or should that be hell?) that they only included a very minimal amount (mostly on 'And Damnation is forced upon the weak, probably the weakest song on the album) as when they do include it, it simply doesn't fit with the music or atmosphere at all, they would be much better off without it.
Complaints aside though, I love this album, the atmosphere, the imagery, the brutality and beauty of it, there is so much to like on this album, even if it is a bit inconsistent, the good parts are really,
really good.
