apanthropy

Drowning the Light/Ghosts of Oceania
Mountain of Malevolence
Iron Bonehead Productions
Released: 10/11/23
Version Reviewed: 12″ LP, Black. Limited Edition of 500 Copies.

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A1 – Ghosts of Oceania – Nostalgia & Malevolence…I’ve Felt This Presence Before
A2 – Drowning the Light – The Many Gates of the Mountain (Shedding Ones Mortal Skin)
A3 – Ghosts of Oceania – He Who Haunts the Hallway… (The Lost Spirit)
A4 – Drowning the Light – The Shadows that Walk the Hills
B1 – Ghosts of Oceania – Those Eyes… Watching
B2 – Drowning the Light – A Forest Crowned in Graves
B3 – Ghosts of Oceania – Spectres that Gather at Dusk
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Azgorh, the mastermind behind both projects involved in this split, has a staggering output of releases, having, at the time of this writing, credits amassed with 151 separate releases, including but not limited to Black Funeral, Pestilential Shadows, Eternum, Strigoii and Wolfblood. With Mountain of Malevolence, the Australian musician merges the artistic visions of Drowning the Light and Ghosts of Oceania to create a marriage that results in desperate, majestic, and haunting black metal that creates a supernatural atmosphere and focuses on the occult, in specific, the otherworldly spiritual infestations of the region he had grew up in.

Mountain of Malevolence is a combination of both long-form black metal and instrumental interludes that flank the tracks proper. The vast majority of the instrumental material is generated from Ghosts of Oceania with the black metal generated, as expected, from Drowning the Light.

Ghosts of Oceania open the album with a short piano interlude, a somber sobering number that sets the tone for the first proper track from Drowning the Light, ‘The Many Gates of the Mountain (Shedding Ones Mortal Skin),’ which clocks in at nearly nine minutes in length. The first part of the track is driven by a minor chord progression at mid-tempo that sets a melancholic atmosphere, braced by an eighth note beat that transitions into a blastbeat with keyboard swells being introduced before the central musical narrative recirculates. Azgorh’s raspy vocals are well-mixed into the overall sound, not being too frontal, and never being too excessive. A double melody enters on the keyboards over a double-bass percussion attack before a break is introduced in the track. The song transitions into a breakdown and enters a lengthy segment of sorrowful half-time with a synth lead melody driving it. This theme and musical narrative dominates the remaining life span of the song.

The next track is another interlude by Ghosts of Oceania, ‘He Who Haunts the Hallway…(The Lost Spirit),’ a brief spatial mix of harpsichord and piano that leads in Drowning the Light’s next track ‘The Shadows that Walk the Hills.’ The song’s beginning combines two reverb-drenched guitars working in tandem, one utilizing a static minor chord progression and the other a single-note tremolo-picked melody that pushes the narrative forward. Haunting choir swells from the keyboards enter to add another layer of depth alongside Azgorh’s croaked and hoarse vocals, serving as almost an instrumental chorus section of sorts. Toward the closing third of the track, a beautiful additional layer of female vocals is added to the central musical narrative as Azgorh switches to a spoken-word style. This combination of dissonance and consonance is truly captivating and an element that could have been used more.

The first track of Side B is the only non-instrumental contribution by Ghosts of Oceania and is one of the best tracks on the album, ‘Those Eyes…Watching.’ Opening with a massively overdriven bass line, and flanked by a beautifully organic sounding drum tone, the whole of the track has a feeling of spontaneity and life to it that seems ironic for a track dealing with death, mortality, and specters. The bass line is the primary driver of the song, Azgorh utilizes both a traditional black metal vocal technique during the verse and a more bombastic cleaner vocal style during the verses where his vocals are accented by a layer of harmonized female vocals that genuinely adds a massive layer of tonality to the overall density of the track. This is a standout moment for Mountain of Malevolence. Beautiful. Haunting. The music of midnight. The essence of spirituality and the occult captured through tones and musical patterns. The musical fusion of both death and deathlessness.

‘A Forest Crowned in Graves’ is the final contribution by Drowning the Light and the last non-instrumental track of Mountain of Malevolence. It is the shortest of the Drowning the Light contributions, coming in at just shy of five minutes in length and is stylistically the most traditional to conventional black metal. Opening with a keyboard melody and a grinding tremolo chord section, the song passes into a central narrative driven by a somber and sweet keyboard melody in the higher register that is offset by raging palm-muted chords in the lower register. The central precedents of the tracks are within the hooks established by the melodies of the keyboards and the harmony accents of the guitars in the early part of the track, towards the final third, the intensity picks up as a blastbeat enters and the guitars begin grinding to match pace.

The album closer is a massive instrumental keyboard contribution by Ghosts of Oceania, ‘Spectres that Gather at Dusk,’ which clocks in at over eleven minutes in length. Slow in pace and minor in its progressions, it serves its purpose as stated in its title. This is the culmination of the concept that the split has explored throughout its entirety. The night is over, and the day is arriving. The piece is sobering, depressing, and moving. The crash of piano chords is flanked by a wash of gentle synth swells and warbling choirs, the spirits collect and disperse. The album is over.

Azgorh sought to utilize both Drowning the Light and Ghosts of Oceania to explore the concepts of the occult and the supernatural dealings around the area he had grown up in, and through Mountain of Malevolence this objective has been supremely achieved. Both through the instrumental leanings of Ghosts of Oceania and the somber depressive nature of Drowning the Light’s black metal contributions, this is an album worth checking out. Pure midnight music worth “depressing” into.

Label: Iron Bonehead Productions
Band: Drowning the Light
Band: Ghosts of Oceania

-AJK