What should you as a bunch of musicians do, when your singer leaves the band? Well, there are basically two or three ways out of that misery, right? End it all, go instrumental or get another singer? German Blackened Doom maestros Morast went for the third option, wrote new material and now released a great new record – but please, let‘s not call it a comeback, okay?
Fentanyl is an agonist used in modern medicine in order to block out all and any (physical) pain a patient might endure, in a sense it is the body-related equivalent to Prozac. Not wanting to guess which pain some of the band members of Morast might have endured in the last 5,5 years since the release of their second full-length Il Nostro Silenzio (via Totenmusik and Ván Records) one can hear that their music is not meant to help physically. The music is dark, doomy and driven by a need to get rid off some of the demons – that is basically what a catharsis is meant to be. And when listening to the six tracks this is what I felt – I came out the other end of these 34 minutes not smiling but surely eased of too much pain, as if somebody had understood some of my tension, some of my inner turmoil. A lot of that has to do with the sound of the record, it is dark, yes, but it is not suffocating or amplifying one’s negative emotions, it sounds as if you are talking to somebody who knows exactly what you are going through or went through.
A lot of that has to do with the impressive job Andy Rosczyk did at recording the album at his Goblin Sound studio. Some of you might know as one of the guitarists of the almighty Ultha with whom Morast not only shared stages multiple times but also did two cover 7” with – one covering Bathory, one Fields of the Nephilim. The latter also shows the range of their influences – not the regular Black Metal bands but also some Post-Punk, which for many people, including yours truly, oftentimes is much darker than the former. Morast also have some moments on Fentanyl that are dragging along the borders of Post-Punk and Doom – listen to the moody intros to the middle couple ”Walls Come Closer” & “A Thousand and More” the drums take their time to fill the room and the bass line is vibrating into infinite melancholy. Furthermore, there are several highly ambient passages that underline the darkness, for example in ”Walls Come Closer”. This is just one example of how well-crafted the record really is, the songs are well-established and find the right timing without being too long. They even find “the time” for a short-fused bomb like ”Akasha” which dominates your ear tunnels for only four minutes.
Last but not least, one must mention the vocal contributions of their new singer – none other than the infamously famous Zingultus of Nagelfar, Graupel and Endstille-fame. He says that the record and work with the other guys helped him escape the dark holes he was in before joining as he calls him “the Morast gang”. His dark, guttural vocals adorn the songs with space and volume as well as a kind of fight and even sometimes a tinge of hope, for example when he screams about ”Fire! Fire! All the way!” - this can be seen as darkness overtaking him as well as a call to arms!
This record will be spun by all people who love their Doom Metal combined with Blackened, Guttural screams turning the songs into brilliant Extreme Metal tracks. Thanks Morast for this great kind of medication as well as choosing the third option and not calling it quits!
