Horologium - Starvation Musings
Horologium is back!! (if you remember my earlier review). This time we are dealing with a cassette EP from Spanish Marbre Negre, a 4 tracker called Starvation Musings. Recorded in 2018 and 2019, Zielona Góra, Poland. And limited to 75 copies, plus each tape comes with a pin.
Somewhere in the realm of martial industrialism and the borders of apocalyptic dark-ambient, this little treat deals in the horror of starvation. Something which is a problem when one is living in the shadow of such problems as war, poverty, disease (pandemic?) or just a case of living as a farmer where things will... just not grow. As being detailed on the cover artwork, children being one of the most terrible victims of this. It might be an old photo from the "good" old days, but starvation (especially among children) is still a problem that still doesn't concern those who have way too much money up their arses. The inside cover-artwork reveals (mostly) women with buckets, collecting water from a well surrounded by snow and ice (frozen water?). Since the band is from east Europe, I could imagine that these photos or from those parts as well. I am no expert in history, but I do know that many east European countries have struggled with famine and poverty... And some places like Romanian still does.
The first track on the EP is called Musselmänner. Read this first:
A looped sample from some classical kind of music, reverbed drums, doom-laden (and looped trumpets), and the strings of a screaming violin-sound being stretched into eternity.
The second track Wasting Away adds a touch of desolation and melancholia. Haunting piano-notes, whispering human-voices, the sound of someone walking in sewage (I think), and an eerie... sort of humming and moaning background. The sound of despair, at that point where human-life just accepts grief and death as an everyday issue. The listener is left with a very, sad sensation after this track. Interesting metallic tribalism (ála Test Dept) at the end gives the track a "nice" post-apocalyptic feel. Really love the haunted voices in the background.
When you get to the third track called Enter The Famine (on the B-side of the cassette) it just gets... a bit more "lifeless". Cold and desolate black-ambient and metallic ritualistic beatings like Archon Satani, interesting collage of samples going on in the background, church bells, and angelic humming drones coming from some temple nearby... ´Bring out your dead!´... you get the picture!.
The fourth and last track Their Life Is Short, But Their Number Is Endless might just the... the merriest track in the EP. It´s the sound of final death and the soul is delivered from the agonized body. A short but effective outro.
Interesting how much thought and mood you can put on only 28 minutes, but that is how this one works. Would have been too long if we were dealing with 70 minutes full-length, but this tiny cassette deals with the theme very seriously and I can assure you that you will be convinced! This is a must release, everything on this release seems like it has been made in a very thorough way (and I do think that it is!). This is a must dear reader... A MUST!.
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