There are Black Metal albums that use the occult as mere decoration, and there are albums that actually try to make the music revolve around it. ‘Ars Aurea Mortis’, by Mascharat, belongs to the second kind. The Italian band does not treat masks, alchemy and death as cover art ornaments. The album grows out of these elements, and each track feels like a stage in a rite. They did not reinvent the wheel, but they have more than enough discipline and atmosphere.
What caught my attention the most was the way they work with the idea of the mask. It is not just about hiding a face. It is about transforming identity, creating distance, becoming something else. That is why I would rather connect them to bands such as Mortuary Drape, because of that Italian tradition of esoteric Black Metal, and even Master’s Hammer, because of the taste for staging, oddness and theatrical tension. This is not just riff after riff. It feels like there is a story being told.
The album is built like an alchemical journey. ‘Re Mida’ sets the tone, and then ‘Nigredo’, ‘Albedo’, ‘Citrinitas’ and ‘Rubedo’ form the core of the record. Decomposition, purification, combustion… it is not explained like a book, but you can feel the temperature changing through the songs. There is harsh Black Metal, insistent guitars, rough vocals and more suspended moments, almost as if the music were breathing inside a closed room. It has theatricality, but without overdoing it.
Musically, it works best when they allow the atmosphere to grow without rushing. The riffs are not the most original ones you will hear this year, and in some parts the band leans on familiar solutions. Even so, the execution is focused. Hellequin’s voice has the character of a possessed narrator, less concerned with just screaming and more interested in guiding the atmosphere. The bass and effects from Stilleben give body to that feeling of dark matter in transformation.
Compared to Cultes des Ghoules, Mascharat is less grotesque and more alchemical. Less Sabbath chaos, more masked initiation. Blut Aus Nord may come to mind now and then because of the strangeness, but the soul of this album is much more Mediterranean and ritualistic.
Its limitation is that the concept is sometimes stronger than some of the individual structures. There are moments where they could have twisted the riffs further or deepened the sense of danger. Still, when you listen to the album as a flow, it works. ‘Ars Aurea Mortis’ succeeds because it understands that gold, in this reading, is not a clean reward. It is contaminated matter, fatal desire, death worked on until it shines. A solid, symbolic and well crafted album. It does not ask for immediate impact, but it grows once you accept entering the circle.
