You’ve heard of spooky purple castle black metal? Now get ready for, uh…creepy blue glacier black metal. Which, now that I think about it, is almost certainly already a thing, but in the case of Alberta, Canada’s Warlocks of Morgul, what you get is far from what is already out there. After a very well celebrated series of a solo EP and split with Nom de Guerre, Empire of Puritanical Sorrow marks the project’s proper debut. How can you go wrong with a cover like this and a Lord of the Rings inspired name?
The answer is, you can’t. Warlocks of Morgul takes everything that is, ironically, cozy and familiar about old-school melodic black metal and injects it with a fire and fury that comes from someone who clearly knows their way around an instrument, technically speaking and creatively speaking. Icarium, a.k.a Evan Jack Langenberg, is the one-man driving force behind Warlocks of Morgul, writing, performing, arranging, programming and engineering every instrument on Empire of Puritanical Sorrow. And what a performance it is. Empire is a technically astounding showcase of frenetic riffs, blistering solos and thundering bass, all shrouded in the familiar blanket of lo-fi-but-not-indecipherable production. Upon first listen, this thing *rips*. There’s a punky energy that I adore when it is thrown into my black metal, and that level of loogie-spitting intensity never really lets up for more than a moment here. The riffs are all over the place, from your classic tremolo picked assault to more inventive use of the fretboard and atonality, which pretty effortlessly tread between your prototypical black metal of yore and a really fluid, modern sounding sense of songwriting, all while still maintaining that wild and rebellious spirit that is a common throughline in both punk and black metal.
Empire doesn’t skimp on the melody either, and all throughout the album you as the listener are severely beaten over the head with a series of really sonically interesting melodies that do wonders to show off the charm of Langenberg’s playing. The one-two punch of opener “Invocations of Eternal Blasphemy” into lead single “Beseeching Cosmic Dialogues” is a whole host of some of the most talented, ferocious and downright fun black metal I’ve heard in a while. It’s approximately eleven minutes of rip-roaring riffs and pummeling drums that immediately hooked me into Empire’s vibe. There’s a way that the melodies stick with you that really makes these songs earworms, which is hard to do for black metal. And the solos? Holy shit, the solos on this thing are downright jaw-dropping. Really, one of the main criticisms I have of Empire is that there aren’t more of them. We’re talking blistering runs, sweep picked arpeggios, sickening bends and every other trick in the book seamlessly pulled out and put to brutally effective use. Speaking of criticism though, there is one other small but noticeable fly in the ointment: I’m not a huge fan of the drum sound used on Empire. I’m also not the best at immediately picking out whether drums are programmed or not, but I’m gonna say I think they are programmed here, and they are a touch on the loud and slightly robotic side. Not nearly enough to ruin the experience, and I gotta say that the rest of the production is wildly good. I might not vibe with the drum tone but the bass tone grabbed my ears immediately and whispered sweet nothings right into the old brain-hole.
Bandcamp Friday returns today, and if you’re not spending your hard-earned ONE WHOLE CANADIAN DOLLAR on Empire of Puritanical Sorrow, I don’t even know what you’re doing today. If you’re a fan of black metal that is on the raucous and melodic side, this is gonna be a home run for you. It’s got everything that I personally could possibly want out of a cover and a name like that, with a few twists and surprises along the way for good measure.
— Ian
Empire of Puritanical Sorrow is available now on Fiadh Productions. For more information on Warlocks of Morgul, visit their Bandcamp page.