MZ.412 — Svartmyrkr

Appearing twelve years after their last full-length Svartmyrkr finds this pioneering Swedish black Industrial project bringing together hazed, dense & ritual charged percussion & blackened horn-work, with tar-black & murky industrial ambient elements. All to create a decidedly unpredictable album, that moves between bombastic brood,murky dark grander,and ritual organic uneasy.

The album's cover takes in a decidedly grim & bleak illustration of huge Wicker Man-like figure, with the projects inverted runic symbol in its middle. And more than any past Mz.412 release it feels like it’s telling a full sonic story, based roughly around the cover art- instead of the more random snapshot feel of past albums.  There seems like a firm beginning, middle, and end- with really both ends of the album deep in terminal ritual damnation- as it begins with a blend of blurred chanting, spaced out ritual hits, blackened horn brood- which are edged by dark chanting & roasting fire textures. Then it ends with a darkly epic mix of bounding percussion, brooding horn sway, muffled backward voices, and blurred animal screams & wails- very much feeding into the Wicker Man imagery.

The whole album feels cinematic, yet often foreboding & dense- it really seems like Mz.412 have taken a lot of time tooling, blending, and perfecting each tracks layout. So each works as a stand-alone statement of malevolent black industrial might & atmosphere- yet together they build a focused, chilling & detailed sonic story. Gone are the at times random prime evil dialogue samples of the past, and instead we have a sound that the project have seemingly totally built from the ground up themselves.

Though-out the albums ten tracks & forty-eight-minute runtime, there’s always a feeling of both uneasy & unpredictable- a track may start off with flayed bombastic percussion hits & bellowed blacked whisper, then it will suddenly start to darkly haze and drift off into foreboding ambient waters. Or we get blends of lulling aquatic texturally uneasy & clean picked guitar, then we rapidly slip into a churning maelstrom of blacked chugging guitar- hinting back at the projects early dabbling's in black metal.

The release is available in three different editions- a CD in a glossy digipak, black vinyl gatefold, and blood red vinyl edition in a gatefold- the last is only available direct from Cold Spring, and is Ltd to just  412 copies.

Svartmyrkr is the blackly triumphant raising of the unholy sonic leviathan that is MZ.412. With the album the project have stepped away from their simple Black industrial label- to create a sonically multi-faceted release that dips its blacked toe in all manner of darkly experimental waters- all to make an album that will simmer & burn in one's mind long after it’s finished. Twelve years is certainly a long time to wait for a new album, but Svartmyrkr was most certainly worth the wait.