Cold Mouth Prayer (Rom 5:12 - Marduk)

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Rom 5:12 - Marduk
Date:	12/11/09 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: some great riffs, varied, inventive, well executed, atmospheric

Disadvantages: nothing spectacular

With their tenth full lenght album 'Rom 5:12' swedish black metal veterans Marduk continue their move away from earlier militaristic themes to the death-obsessed medieval aesthetic evident in their previous 2004 album 'Plague Angel'.

The songs are an entertaining mixture of fast tremelo-riffing and frequent sections of relentless mid-paced guitars, and its a very consistent listen, with engaging song-progression and lots of atmosphere, helped along by the rasped, half-gargled vocals of singer Mortuus.

The production is quite big without being too clean, with the drums sitting quite prominently in the mix but the guitars still sounding powerful, and the songs tend to reveal a level of inventiveness, bounding from bouncy, catchy melodic riffs to drawn out, procession-like passages, melancholy mid-paced melodic leads and periods of blistering, blastbeat-heavy hammering.

There is an interesting use of samples throughout, including gregorian chanting, old badly-recorded church singing, tolling bells and recordings of prayers in Latin, and on the mid-paced track Opposer/Accuser Mortuus even engages in an interesting vocal duet with Primordial singer Naihmass Nemtheanga, whose clean and melancholy yearning vocals contrast nicely with the former singer's coarse, bubbling growls.

Rom 5:12 can be less than wholly engaging in places, but overall it is an interesting and enjoyable listen that merges different tempos to create an entertaining and fairly original black metal album.

Tracklisting-

1. The Levelling Dust 05:11
2. Cold Mouth Prayer 03:28
3. Imago Mortis 08:36
4. Through The Belly Of Damnation 04:19
5. 1651 04:54
6. Limbs Of Worship 04:24
7. Accuser / Opposer 08:43
8. Vanity Of Vanities 03:40
9. Womb Of Perishableness 07:01
10. Voices From Avignon 05:08

Total playing time 55:24

Summary: a great fast to mid-tempo black metal album