Moral Order — Krypteia
Moral Order is a power electronics project of Spanish musician Fernando O. Paino, who has another rather interesting project Da-Sein, which focuses in on combining Power Electronics, Industrial and quite soft (sometimes almost dance) rhythms.
According to the information taken from Discogs, Fernando has been active as a musician since 2012. During this time, hes recorded one full-length album with the project Aura Noctis. One 7 "EP and one full-length album were released with the Da-Sein project. The Moral Order is one of the more recent projects of Fernando. It started in 2018 and released one full-length album and one cassette mini-album. The new album, entitled Krypteia, was released in early 2019 by American label Malignant Records in the form of a Digipack CD. Also, another American label Cloister Recordings has released this album as double cassette edition. Both labels also released an album in digital version. All this is available for ordering on label sites and their Bandcamp pages.
The album cover is a rather gloomy black and white collage of a large number of human skulls and a fire in the centre. All this is processed in the style of newspaper photography. In the upper left corner in the black vertical rectangle is the logo of Moral Order. In the centre of the rectangle there is a graphic image of the guillotine, above which is located the word Mortal, and below it is Order. Words are written in simple white font. Just below the word ORder is the Krypteia album title, made in the same font, but slightly smaller. In general, the cover is made in the classic (I would even say - in the old-school) Power Electronics / Death Industrial style.
The album, the total duration of just under fifty-one minutes consists of ten tracks. According to official release information, Moral Order style is positioned as Heavy Electronics. To be honest, such styles as Power Electronics, Death Industrial and Heavy Electronics are so closely related that sometimes the line between these genres is almost not noticeable. All these styles (mostly) are based on processed monotone synthesizer sounds that have a certain cyclical nature.
Also in the official information indicated that Moral Order is a completely analogue project. Of course, after this information, I expected to hear the classic sound of power electronics. In general, my assumptions were justified.
Having listened to the entire album, I formally divided it into two parts, differing in mood and presentation of the material.
The first part of the album tracks one through five - "Dead Bodies", "Murder Weapon", "Capitulation", "This Is the Life You Must Live", "The Hope Windbreaker". The material presented on these tracks is a rather rich and tough PE with looped rhythmic sound based on synthesizers. dry electrical pulsating buzz diluted with various samples that support the rhythmic pattern of the compositions. Also, there are classic PE voice inserts from reports, interviews or films, as well as distorted vocative vocals. Very often there are moments close to Death Industrial, both in sound and in vocal terms. Some elements are close in rhythm and mood to another project Fernando O. Paino - Da-Sein, but they are made in a more extreme way.
The second part of the album is tracks six to ten - "Day of the Dead", "Slaves", "Purge", "To Die In Life, Anonymous Carrion". These tracks have a calmer and more monotonous sound and are closest to the classic Death Industrial in the spirit of Atrax Morgue and Brighter Death Now. The main focus is on a little-distorted synthesizer sound. Of course, there are more extreme elements here that are close the first five tracks - distorted vocals, samples, and voice inserts. But still, the general mood here is more meditative and, perhaps, a bit thoughtful.
In general, the album Krypteia has much more Death Industrial elements than Power / Heavy Electronics. I really liked the sound of the whole album. Along with dry electrical parts, there are many sound elements that complement the overall sound picture, preventing the sound from moving towards the minimalism that is inherent in the classic Death Industrial. I can’t say that I heard Old-school analogue sound because in this age of technology it is already difficult to distinguish digital sound from analogue. In my opinion, analogue sound is important, first of all, for the musicians themselves, while the listener perceives the album a little differently. However, while listening to the album, I was pleased to realize that all this was recorded in a classical way.
Despite the fact that, in my subjective opinion, the album is clearly divided into two parts, different in mood, it seems to be a solid piece of music. There are a huge number of projects in this genre, so making something original is quite difficult. But Fernando very skillfully used the legacy of PE and DI, so the album, although not a masterpiece of originality, it's an easy play and does not overtly suffering from borrowing or plagiarism.