Review Summary: Black metal. No bullshit.
Morthar is the type of a project that doesn’t get too much traction, but obliterates most of its contemporaries. One look at the cover photo of
10 Commandments and you know the deal – the man behind the project is much and very trve and draws the best from early black metal. Think of something along the lines of “Freezing Moon” but louder and a tad more polished. Also, besides being a huge flex, the Venom poster that takes up half of the album’s cover is indicative of its other stylistic trait: just like
Black Metal, it is catchy as hell.
10 Commandments rams into your skull right from the fist second. The opening two-parter “Traitor” is dopeness on full display. Part 1 is a continuous groove-fest and shows the author’s agility in changing his screaming tone in the verses. Around the two-thirds mark, a frantic arpeggiated bridge kicks in with a load of tension before a satisfyingly long, groovy outro. The frantic feeling returns with full force in part 2, which is the polar opposite of the first one. Velocity and sharp guitar leads take over, the slower sections topped with grim spoken word are reassigned to compliment them and build tension. Just a half of the track is needed for the emotions to peak as Morthar starts furiously seething into the microphone over a blazing angle grinder of a guitar riff. This fury protrudes into a lengthy and hauntingly beautiful outro, and gives you a sense of rotting alive from rage.
“Ashen Remains” is an apt title for the following interlude, as it feels like the displayed anger left nothing but burning ruins in its wake. It’s a little over 2 minutes of strings being plucked over the sound of cracking fire, gracefully providing a moment of rest and making room for “Gallery of the Hung”. It’s possibly the most universal cut on the record, bringing together the aggressive rhythms of the opener and the dark epic feeling of its follow-up, with the addition of a recurring bouncy beat which I swear would make for a banger hip-hop instrumental. The following “Twisted Path of Existence” isn’t as memorable as the initial tracks, but is simply a finely executed black metal juggernaut. It certainly gives off a twisted feeling, being a chimaera of droning grooves and sped-up hardcore-ish passages. And I'm saying ‘chimaera’ because these are contrasting, but transition into each other seamlessly.
Things get frantic again in the album’s second half with “Descending Terror”. Morthar spits straightforward anger instead of the dripping venom of the previous two numbers, the chorus is one of the catchiest on here and the drumming is outright concussive. At this point you could say that
10 Commandments is a competent release, but the established scheme of quick transitions, looping grooves and lengthy outros is starting to run dry. However, “Gates of True Hell” draws an unexpected new card: epicness. I can’t pinpoint the exact cause of that, but the song simply feels grandiose. “Everlasting Flame” amplifies that feeling by including a choral background and bringing the speed and the vocal pitch to a local extreme. It still has a decent amount of groove present, but also a dense, sacral even, atmosphere present nowhere else on the record.
The closing duo of “Timeless, the Strongest” and “Passing Shadow of the Weak” returns to the general stylistic frame of
10 Commandments, but thanks to being preceded with more atmospheric cuts it doesn’t come with a sense of staleness as strong as it would be otherwise. Both of them feel like ‘standard’ Morthar, except the former is an instrumental… which, surprisingly, is an advantage, because it gives it a modicum of uniqueness. The latter is probably the least interesting song on the album. It feels like at this point, the author’s sleeve became void of tricks, which leaves us with a not very memorable, but still competent bm closer.
10 Commandments was a random finding of mine that felt like I struck a vein of gold. Somewhere on the opposite end of the country, Morthar has crafted an immensely strong debut and one of the best records of the year. It’s a finely written and executed slab of memorable, punky black metal, honoring the genre’s forerunners while throwing in a square ton of engaging ideas and climactic song structures. One problem I have with it (besides the two closing tracks) is rather trivial – the double-bass drumming is barely audible. Other than that,
10 Commandments is simply a juggernaut of a record.
