AN NCS PREMIERE: MO’YNOQ — “THE COLLECTOR”

 

Early last year I discovered Bardo, the then-forthcoming new EP by a black metal crew from Raleigh, North Carolina, named Mo’ynoq — and it made such a powerful immediate impression that I reached out to them to ask if we could premiere one of the tracks to accompany a review of Bardo (and you can find that here). Now Mo’ynoq have completed work on their debut album — Dreaming In A Dead Language — and once again I asked if we could host a premiere of one of the new songs in advance of its official release on January 11th. Once again, the band agreed.

I hasten to add that we don’t usually ask for the opportunity to host premieres. Almost all the time, the requests come to us. But the new Mo’ynoq album is so damned good, and so damned exciting, that I couldn’t resist. The song chosen by the band is the album’s second track, “The Collector“.

 

 

This new song begins building from a starting point in which dissonant, eerie, brain-spearing notes ring out, those abrasive and unsettling tones punctuated by the surprising intervention of explosive percussive detonations. When the song eventually finds its rhythm, the music is mid-paced and massive, thanks to an enormous, sludgy bass tone and skull-cracking drum strikes, and also disturbing, thanks to the vocalist’s raw, livid howls and roars.

And then the storm breaks in full — the drums begin blasting, the bass thundering and bubbling, the howls transforming into a mix of shrieks and gruesome roars, and the riffs accelerating into a mad, broiling, yet blood-freezing fury. The pandemonium includes bursts of jolting fretwork and hammering drums, with crazed, flickering, fire-bright, insectile leads. It’s enough to spin your head in a whirr — but it becomes apparent that the band still haven’t finished sending the music’s intensity into the red zone. For the finale, they erupt into an even more breathtaking berserker frenzy, with the vocals reaching incinerating new heights of throat-splitting, blood-spraying, pain and fury.

It really is an electrifying and unsettling experience, and an adventurous and technically impressive one. The trip from the way the song begins to the way it ends is so gripping that if you’re like me you’ll want to return to the start and take this intense thrill-ride again, without delay.

 

Dreaming In A Dead Language has now become available for pre-order on Bandcamp, adorned by eye-catching cover art created by Pierre Perichaud (aka Business For Satan). We’ll have more to say about the album as a whole in the coming weeks.

BANDCAMP:
https://moynoq.bandcamp.com/

FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/moynoq/

TRACK LIST:
1. Empyreal Decay
2. The Collector
3. These Once Tranquil Grounds
4. Doomed To Endure
5. Carve My Name
6. Witness To The Abyss
7. Buried By Regret