Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Urna - Mors Principium Est (2013)


Urna, along with Arcana Coelestia, with whom they share a crucial multi-instrumentalist, make what I consider to be the ideal style of funeral doom for my tastes. The music is largely dissonant, but allows just enough melody to peek through the cracks to allow a heartbreaking beauty to provide a backdrop to the crushing, ugly heaviness. It's lushly, densely layered; in my post about Arcana Coelestia, I wrote that it sounds as though there are "fifteen guitars, clean and distorted, all playing something different, at all times," and the same can be said about Urna. And while the vocals won't change your life, they're exactly what they should be: monstrous, cavernous growls that could be emanating from a deep chasm in the earth, demonic screams, and, at times, reverb-drenched choral singing. To cap it all off, they've allowed some of their black metal roots to stick around, especially on the oddly named "137 = 73 + 64".  I don't love Mors Principium Est quite as much as the aformentioned Arcana Coelestia record, but I do enjoy it more than about 95% of all other doom metal records.

1. Omnis infinita mens est gremium et sepolcrum universi
2. Ego sum templum et principium omniae rei
3. Intermezzo
4. Octo sunt grados ad càpere fine cycli magni
5. 137 = 73 + 64
6. Fui Sum Ero

The dream descends to the region of moon
To the land, the sphere of eternal sin

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