MURW: "In de Mond van Het Onbekende Wacht Een Oceaan"

How long can it actually take to get around to review an album? Well, there are other examples as well that have taken a billion years before I've had anything proper to say about the content, mostly due to complex and profound lyrics that I've wanted to analyze better than every layman's Darkthrone pastiche, but Murw's demo from a couple of years back is such a weird affair that it has challenged me quite successfully. On In de Mond van Het Onbekende Wacht Een Oceaan, this Dutch group delivers fifty minutes of underground and rather low fidelity black metal that, despite my expectations of traditional black metal, does compromise a lot.

Things seem natural when the beautiful guitar melodies of the intro kick in, and when the murky main riff of the first proper track appears, a tad later joined by steady blast beats. But it takes less than four minutes when Striborg esque odd synths distort the atmosphere into something quite unique. From there on and throughout the playing time, In de Mond... crawls forth like a convulsing ugly worm with all kinds of unexpected twists in a rather slow tempo, but the beauty aspect first fronted in the intro is carried throughout the record as well, appearing in a myriad of lead guitar melodies. Yes, there's a lot of melody in here despite the extremely challenging nature of the album.

I feel uneasy right now, struggling to come up with words describing In de Mond... and I suppose it is both a positive and negative thing. Murw has most certainly created a musical journey unlike anyone else, but it is also hard to find anything really grabbing from the complex mess, save a couple of the lead melodies. Musicianship is pretty top notch, no question of that, these guy seem professional at what they're doing in spite of the overall demo spirit. There's plenty of groove in the drums and the guitars get pretty damn wild at times. In de Mond van Het Onbekende Wacht Een Oceaan is an interesting experience that perhaps just lacks truly impressive songwriting (or then I just haven't given it enough time), hence it's a good listen but I can't say I ever remember much of it afterwards.

3 / 5