Mz.412 — In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi(2019
Perhaps the most legendary album from the project is In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi, released in 1995 by the cult Swedish label Cold Meat Industry. This album gave birth to the style Black Industrial, combining the aesthetics of black metal and industrial music. In 2010, the album was reissued with two bonus tracks by the famous label Cold Spring. Here from Italian label Annapurna, we get a vinyl re-release of the album in the form of double LP release.
The album cover is a photo taken in red. On a dark foggy background, we see a man, naked to the waist, with an inverted cross around his neck. A man holds a cow skull by the horns in such a way that we can not see his face. At the bottom, the burgundy gothic font with a white outline says the name of the project - Mz.412. On the sides of the name are series of white symbols- they looks like stylized Scandinavian runes and inverted crosse. Just below, the name of the album - In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi - is written in a simple white font of a small size. The new cover recreates the cover of the classic 1995 album, except that in the original version the red and black photo was smaller and was in the centre of a rather dirty white /black /red background. The layout of the text part has also changed, as well as the colour and spelling. In general, the new cover looks cleaner and more presentable.
The album with a total duration of just over one hour and five minutes consists of eleven tracks. It should be noted that this is not exact reissue of the classic album of 1995, but the 2010 Cold Spring edition. Though this differs from the CS edition in changing the order of the tracks and one bonus track, whereas in the 2010 edition there were two bonus tracks, and, by the way, the order of the tracks was also different from the original album.
I am sure that most fans of industrial and experimental music are familiar with this album. But, nevertheless, I will talk a little about the musical part. The album is a fairly tough industrial bordering on noise, based on repetitive samples and synthesizers layers. As each composition develops, we get replacement of several rhythmic patterns and sound components. Sometimes we can hear the touches of Power Electronics and Death Industrial, sometimes there is quite saturated Dark Ambient feel. There is also a greater number of voice samples, which undoubtedly refers us to PE. The rhythmic section here is quite diverse and is based on distorted drum samples or some other sounds.
I first heard this album around 1996. I can’t say that at that time I was very impressed with this album, although at that time my favourite project was Brighter Death Now, which is somewhat close in spirit to Mz.412. And now, after more than 20 years, I returned to In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi to listen to it again, but from a more professional point of view. Unfortunately, my impressions remained almost the same as in 1996.
Without a doubt, this album is a landmark for Mz.412 and for fans of extreme experimental music in general, but now it sounds a bit naive. It seemed to me to be too diverse in its sound – there’s a feeling that the musicians recorded all the ideas that they had at that time, without worrying about the general style and atmosphere of the album. In some reviews, I've read that the album has an atmosphere of black metal. Perhaps every listener has his own idea of this atmosphere, but specifically, I didn’t hear in In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi a black metal mood. Except for the themes of the compositions and the album title itself, of course. However, I cannot deny that this album influenced me as a musician. Apparently, due to the fact that this album presents too many different approaches to writing this type of music, each listener finds here a bit of what he likes exactly. Undoubtedly, this is an indication that In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi has become a cult album.