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WRATH OF LOGARIUS “Crown Of Mortis”
WRATH OF LOGARIUS “Crown Of Mortis”
By Dr. Abner Mality
The metal world is drowning in meaningless micro-genres. Now we have another one...”formless black metal”. Does that mean black metal with no riffs, no rhythm? Or a sound that’s so all over the place that only the word “formless” applies? What we get is...standard black metal, not rocking the boat in the least.
Dealing with that disappointment, we examine WRATH OF LOGARIUS itself. Another cosplay band, this time dressing up as Halloween skeletons. Pardon me while I stifle a yawn. Said to originate from the “misty forests of Northern California”, the band use the typical kind of black metal names as well: Noctifer, Urath, Vastator, etc. I have a sneaking suspicion that these guys might be a metalcore band deciding to play dress up and be a skeletal black metal band.
Despite the fact that “formless black metal” is a meaningless term, the music on “Crown of Mortis” is by no means amateurish or terrible. The sound is clean and rather overproduced, but there’s a certain amount of ethereal atmosphere to “Keeper of the Spectral Legion” and “Erosion” as well as a good deal of aggression. Lord Marco’s drumming is justly praised. The vocals of Noctifer aren’t anything you haven’t heard before, but pivot between cadaverous rasps and gutteral death growls pretty well.
The first half of the album is entertaining but WRATH OF LOGARIUS cannot sustain the quality. You’d be hard pressed to find a more average and unoriginal black metal tune than “The Ethereal Mist” even though Vilhelm of GRIMA sings on it. The same goes for “Lurker’s Tomb” and “Dread”...not awful songs, but very typical ones. For a band that brags about being something new, it’s a glaring inconsistency. WRATH OF LOGARIUS has the musical tools, but they are just missing something vital.
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