Review Summary: Gates of Mourning holds steadfast to black metal’s tried and true formula, proving that doing what has always been done well still has merit over manipulating the playbook.
In a genre that has only grown and become more internalized in various niches of the metal-verse, black metal continues to expand itself to sound bigger, grander and more stylized. Adding new elements and increasing the focus on composition seems to be the new trend. Then again, some black metal-ers prefer to remain true to their roots. They won’t let go of the bombast of continuous blast beats, the shrieks and the wall of sound that slowly approach the listener like a tidal wave of timbre.
Gates of Mourning, the solo project of Daniel Morris, holds steadfast to black metal’s tried and true formula, proving that doing what has always been done well still has merit over manipulating the playbook. The debut full-length,
Nightfall Blooms and Golden Horns, is a testament to how pure energy and showmanship become infectious. The battery of drumming on tracks like “Of Beauty, Lust and Thrones of Blood” pours out like bare aggression--there’s no reeling in our stopping for breath. In fact, Morris’s vocals often sound strangled and struggling for air, as if he’s bobbing on the surface of water unable to find relief. That, mixed with the conscious lack of lyrics and renaissance aesthetic of the cover and internal art, leaves Morris’s Gates of Mourning in a somewhat mysterious shroud.
Throughout the album, an unspoken persuasion from bands, such as early Ulver or France’s Peste Noire, seems to hang over the balance. Tremolo picking--high on the treble and easy on the bass--continually erupts in feedback and a melting pot of influences. Imagine for a moment that the speed of Ulver’s
Nattens Madrigal was spliced into the deliberate approach of Peste Noire’s
La Sanie des siècles, and you might get a little closer to understanding Gates of Mourning’s first full-length album. Even the folk aspects of those two bands above show up on
Nightfall Blooms, such as the hymnal chants of intro “Dusk, the Birth of Sin,” and the ambient flutes and harpsichord of “For What Draws Breath in Waking Solitude.”
Suddenly, though, the fixed formula gives way to deeper and deeper bass as a resonating cannon shot blasts off on “Scarlet Robes” and Morris’s screeching voice becomes an unearthly growl on “Fairest Dreams in Autumn Embrace.” Plus, it comes complete with a breakdown any hardcore fan boy would go green--or maybe black--with envy over. The culmination of influences begins to feel unending. It’s as if Morris has been inundated by decades of metal and it just isn’t enough to feed off of one or the other.
But the real reason
Nightfall Blooms and Golden Horns keeps itself from becoming simply one more entry into the stock of no-name black-metal passersby, is Morris’s earnest approach to his music writing. A few tracks open up with audio samples from Kenneth Branagh’s film rendition of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. The samples used on the album are also word-for-word from the original novel. At one point you can hear the creature (played by Robert De Niro) say, “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you would not believe / If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other,” and that seems to be the crux of the album: the loss of love and the struggle for acceptance, channeled through Morris’s voice. At one point, his vocals cease to be a crackle and simply become a thirsting yowl, fraught with an overwhelming need to be heard crystal clear.
