Beats and yelling: Mütiilation don’t want to grow old

Black Metal Cult
Out 29th March on Osmose Productions

It’s been 84 years since the release of ‘Sorrow Galaxies’. And finally the not awaited return of Les Légions Noires’ most well known alumnus is here at last. Given the dispute over the Suicide Circle name, it’s perhaps little wonder that Meyhna’ch would seek a less contentious outlet for what appears to be a renewed craving for black metal. He retains complete control over the Mütiilation moniker, making for a suitable creative outlet with enough brand recognition to garner more attention than the various other projects he’s worked on over the years.

But why so cynical? Meyhna’ch is just the latest in a very long list of older names seeking meaning, expression, catharsis, or simple enjoyment from reassembling the projects that made their reputations. At the very least he deserves a fair hearing. This is the project that produced one of the finest French black metal releases ever in ‘Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul’ after all.

Equally, it would be all too easy to dismiss this as someone clinging to their past, and to a scene they helped create, desperately trying to recapture that magic. Digging beneath the title and cutesy cover art however, that’s precisely what we find. But Meyhna’ch is not selling this album on superficial tropes or the low hanging fruit of classic iconography and familiar aesthetics. If anything, this album really is an act of public self-therapy. Just read the following lyrics from the titular track:

Internet ruined everything, abandoned to stupidity. Melancholic memory of the past, praising the black metal cult. Ruined… the evil vibe of the past. What killed the black metal cult. Grim…what is there at last from the old black metal cult.

It’s all a bit Nargaroth’s ‘The Day Burzum Killed Mayhem’ to take too seriously. But unlike Nargaroth, Judas Iscariot, Xasthur, Leviathan, or any other turn of the century third generation figure, Mütiilation’s mid-90s material boasts a significant legacy to this day as a unique articulation of French black metal particularly, but also a striking continuation of Burzum at their most downtrodden and maniacal. The fact that Meyhna’ch’s clearest ancestor was DSBM should not detract from Mütiilation’s formative material, which stands apart and on its own terms.

Much like the music itself, which sees Mütiilation work through their fastest and possibly most “typically” black metal sound to date, this album lashes out in all directions, including inwardly. There’s a deep bitterness, resentment, and regret threaded throughout. A callback to the malaise felt in black metal following the explosion of publicity and sensationalism after the murder of Euronymous. The depression many of its members fell into as a result was understandable.

What’s more confusing is why Meyhna’ch is dredging up this defeatism again, and why now? The guy is approaching his 50s. The lack of self-awareness or willingness to move on is almost remarkable. Reading through the lyrics, it’s clear he can diagnose the condition, express the bitterness, but the self-reflection required to metabolise these symptoms, give voice to their cause or possible cure, or any attempt to probe them in greater detail, all is decidedly lacking. Forgivable in a Fenriz or Necrobutcher in the mid-90s who were still in their twenties at the time of “the fall”, and for whom the events were very immediate and personal. We can’t be so lenient with a man in his late forties still lamenting events that are decades old.

Following an unhinged and highly problematic rant on Islam on the track ‘The Fall of Islam’ – possibly working through some unresolved issues regarding terrorist incidents and the ongoing religious tensions in France being exploited by La Pen and assorted ghouls, and again opening the sore of metal’s sometimes problematically partisan treatment of religion – we get the closer ‘Mirror of Disillusion’, which again hints at self-enlightenment, a considered, almost Proustian turn:

My reflection blurs into infinity, I suddenly turn as an old man,
Decrepit soul and demented spirit, sick and parchmented by time. Misanthropy as wisdom, I know about you all

Before scrapping this brief lucidity in order to lash out at any possibility of reconciliation:

I hate you for what you are, my time on earth was spoiled by humans.

I’m loath to resort to a cheap “go to your room” infantilization, but the regression this demonstrates is fascinating.

Regression is borne out in the music as well, which circles around standard semi-dissonant tremolo runs, accents of traditional melodic flourishes that sound almost triumphal at times, and the usual hardcore punk infused trappings of raw black metal. This is, in some sense, a more compact, efficient delivery mechanism for pure content than previous Mütiilation material. But given the fact that one can’t avoid regarding this as a very vulnerable and very public display of Meyhna’ch’s melancholy, the music appears almost as an afterthought. A second rate rip off of Mütiilation. Again, this observation is probably overused when discussing belated comebacks from respected artists, but the rank indignity of it feels almost intentional on ‘Black Metal Cult’. This title is not a cheap call to arms or toothless celebration of shared symbolism, but a desperate cry for a stolen youth, and an inability to let it go, to renew and regenerate old forms into an expression fit for our older selves.

One can’t help but think of Wordsworth’s ‘Ode’ as a (believe it or not) more articulate meditation on this very condition:

In a thousand valleys far and wide,
                      Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm:—
                      I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
                      —But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
                      The Pansy at my feet
                      Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Some years ago, Mütiilation tried to escape their compound and look beyond the suicidal despondency of the scene they helped to fashion. ‘Sorrow Galaxies’ deserves praise not for what it was but what it tried to be. A compelling rebuttal to Darkspace’s monopoly of “spacey” black metal, which in turn was an attempt to imbue black metal with longevity, to make it endure into the 2000s beyond its tragedian and violent adolescence. But the brutal fact of the matter is that, for all the destructive creativity of Meyhna’ch’s work throughout the 90s, he did not develop enough as a musician to give full voice to this desire. ‘Black Metal Cult’ is a more technically precise, slicker Mütiilation than we have seen before. But there is a distinct lack of creative maturation apparent here.

Again, it should be acknowledged that this does not seem to be the point. It’s a personal album, written almost without the listener in mind. As a result, we are left clutching at straws in regard to what we – the audience – are supposed to take away from it, besides the preceding rumination on the indignities black metal continues to visit upon itself in middle age. Fascinating fuel for scholarship, but hardly commendable as artistry.

Nostalgia is a profoundly powerful emotion. It’s something we’ve discussed at length on this blog. But here, Meyhna’ch goes one step further. Explicitly yearning for the return of innocence. Lashing out at a scene he no longer recognises. This is not subtext, it’s there in the lyrics and to a lesser extent the music. In a sense, he reaches for the truth behind retro genres, arguably constituting the bulk of material now released by metal bands old and new. This is what is really going on behind the fanfare, the “return to our roots”, the worship of the “old ways”, it’s all just a bratty scream into the void that we just can’t accept the idea that the magic will never return. And all that remains are endless attempts at recapitulation, or destructive infighting over who or what is to blame for the passage of time.