Moëvöt
Abgzvoryathre

Black Metal is a peculiar genre. Cliché of the day: you either love it or hate it. However, there's a third option that applies to a few individuals (I am among them) and disrupts these two Manichean rules. You can love it with the necessary distinctions of the case.

Speaking candidly: I have never been able to get excited over certain misanthropic/extermination rhetoric (read, for better understanding of the sources, the books of Pentti Linkola), I've never understood that strange Satanism that the next day turned into neopaganism, and I've never paid attention to the various neo-Nazi ravings of Burzum or Graveland.

Yet there's pleasure to be found in the notes of early Mayhem, Bathory (What did you say? They are proto-Black? Oh, come on!), Darkthrone, or old-school Ulver.

Music that disrupted the '90s underground scene and represented yet another attempt, partly successful, to put "evil" (Hey! I didn’t mention demons!) into music.

Some time ago, by chance, a strange Black album was lent to me. I write "strange" because it came from France and because, once listened to, I found it distant from the Nordic offering that was very much in vogue at the time.

Upon reflection, it was a split-album: Torgeist and Vlad Tepes. I knew nothing about these two groups, but believe me, there was something morbid about those sounds.

I researched the two bands and discovered a flourishing French-underground artistic phenomenon: the Legions Noire.

A sort of Inner Circle beyond the Alps, devoted to producing very fierce music but fortunately distant from murders and church burnings.

What struck me the most, however, was knowing that many of these musicians produced "ambient" material. Let’s be clear: no ambient in the style of Neu! or Coil, nor that dark-ambient today so beloved by the gothic legions.

Instead, it was a fusion of sinister atmospheres, occasional black screams (more strangled than screamed), gentle female vocals, elementary riffs, acoustic parts, and sounds coming from foul crypts.

Jacula in a sixteenth version? Not quite! Besides the graveyard melancholy, there was no reference to prog or doom.

Let’s consider, therefore, the Moëvöt project.

Moëvöt was the ephemeral creation of a certain Vordb Dreagvor Uezeerb. Deliberately unpronounceable name, former member of Torgeist and a thousand other black bands. No one, in reality, knows who he was or what he ever did outside the musical field. Better this way! At least, this time, we don't have to endure the life, death, and miracles of a new Burzum. A man (but is it really a single individual?) who recorded his nightmares on tape and decided to divulge them only to the "insiders." With the internet, we know, the magic of these niche works vanishes and even I myself can easily appreciate it! Do you want to do it too? Go ahead!

Seven semi-instrumental and sometimes spoken tracks that make us quickly sink into the black. Seven tracks ready to drag us with malignant sweetness into a state of hypnotic trance. There is also an unusual recitation of the "Our Father."

Depression, solitude, and melancholy? Yes, but also the scent of unexplored and arcane places. The scent of empty and forgotten places.

Take the risk as well. Risk opening that door and immersing yourself in another world. If no one finds you tomorrow morning...they'll know who to blame!