Officium Triste - Mors Viri
Talk about saving the best song for last! If this entire record were as perfectly gloomy and depressing as the stunning “Like Atlas” I might have to change the rating scale to go to 11. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looks at things, the venerable 1 to 10 scale is in no danger. The rest of Mors Viri is perfectly serviceable Death/Doom, occasionally recalling prime-era My Dying Bride with more than few hints of Paradise Lost (think Shades of God), Agalloch and late ’90s Katatonia. It’s all… fine. No major complaints, but also no “holy fuck, rewind that!” moments. There are a few oddly upbeat bits (the beginning of “The Wounded and the Dying,” for example), somewhat strange clean singing (check out “To the Gallows” and its, I hope, anti-religious lyrics), and what I can only describe as a spoken-word performance of a poem with minimalistic background music (“One with the Sea (Part II),” which features the return of the seagull from the much-heavier original “One with the Sea,” from the band’s 1997 debut LP, Ne Vivam, and is probably my second-favorite song here). Until the 10-minute album-closer started, I was likely not going to bother with this at all, despite it being the Dutch Death men’s first full-length in six years, and just check back in with Officium Triste whenever their next release comes out, since we are trying to write longer reviews than “Solid (mostly) growly-vocals Doom of wildly varying density, with a little weirdness, but little to really make it stand out.” And then “Like Atlas” slow-mo avalanched me after about 80 seconds of eerie, mournful build-up. I knew that I’d have to immediately listen to this masterpiece again (and again…) even before it hit the 6:30 minute mark and metamorphosed into total melancholy Katatonia worshipping perfection. And now… 666 plays later… I don’t want to stop…
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