Info
- Band(s): Mütiilation
- Label(s): End All Life Productions, Ordealis Records
- Release Format(s): 12" vinyl, CD
- Release Year: 2005
- Review Date: April 25, 2005
- Author(s): FelixS
Mütiilation is one of those elite bands from the healty French Black Metal scene. A scene that gets more attention with every year, and with every scene that gets more public interest few of the participating bands will grow a little bigger. Resulting in people complaining that these bands are neglecting their underground roots. Mütiilation is such a band. The band released a lot of things in the past that gave them a huge status in the Black Metal underground and with the bands’ last release they signed to Ordealis Records and got quite some media exposure and has pretty decent sales, but if I had to decide, still really underground, for the music didn’t go commercial at all.
The band presented on their previous album ‘Majestas Leprosus’ a slightly different sound, adapting a more industrialized atmosphere which resulted in a cold and mechanic sound. Songs like ‘Destroy Your Life For Satan’ were bombed to instant Mütiilation classics to me. A slightly different sound that fitted the album and the songs really well. On this new album ‘Rattenkönig’ main man (and now only member) Meyhna’ch decided to go back to the original sound of the band. So the industrialized album was only accidental, so it seems.
‘Rattenkönig’ tells the bizarre German story of enormous amounts of rats that collide. They would join each other with their tails and use excrements, dirt and blood to get stuck together. A story that even demands a more basic raw Black Metal sound instead of a semi-mechanical approach of the genre – don’t get me wrong, ‘Majestas Leprosus’ was a great album for me too.
This album will most likely reunite both camps, the fans of the early days and the ones that were only able to track down the most recent work. In that respect Meyhna’ch did quite a good job, the blurry guitars and pummelling drum computer gives it more of the ‘Vampires Of Black Imperial Blood’-album. The absence of the vocal effects like on the previous album (which could best be heard on the aforementioned ‘Destroy Your Life For Satan’ and for instance ‘New False Prophet’) gives the album a more basic Black Metal atmosphere which would definitely do good with the fans from the earliest days – the vocals seem to be a little raspy but mostly spoken. Though, with the early work in mind this ‘Rattenkönig’ is a little more sophisticated.
I won’t be surprised if there are still people that are able to complain about this album but it is hard and useless to please everyone, but to me this is a great underground raw Black Metal release that is worth checking out. Mütiilation isn’t one of those fancypants bands and one should cherish the few bands that actually still deliver quality raw Black Metal.
