Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week the top pick goes to Mizmor’s “No Place to Arrive.”
Mizmor mastermind A.L.N. is an artist who lays bare his soul, crafting intense doom that’s rooted in the complexities of human emotion and existentialism. The music projects someone who is in pain, often yielding beautiful, if jarringly personal, doom epics like “No Place to Arrive” — the new single from Mizmor’s forthcoming album Prosaic.
A.L.N. states that he wanted to create an “intentionally less conceptual, more slice-of-life record,” something “less precious and obsessed-over, more honest and real; less grandiose and more human.” It’s an admirable goal for an artist’s whose discography resembles a literary canon of masterworks: achievements of a distinct and ambitious artistic vision.
In this case, we’ll gather that “No Place to Arrive” came about through less rigorous means, though the song is no less captivating than Mizmor’s past work. The sludge riffs flow, while the howls echo from somewhere deep and primal. As a sidenote, the song’s brilliant music video was conceived by A.L.N. and Emma Ruth Rundle, and features remarkable Beksiński-esque animations. Watch it below.
Honorable Mentions:
Boris & Uniform – “Not Surprised”
The first single from the Boris & Uniform collab “You Are the Beginning” (which earned “Heavy Song of the Week” honors earlier this month) was a fantastic introduction to the project, melding one of Boris’ thrashier studio outtakes with Uniform singer Michael Berdan’s harshed-out vocals. They follow a similar approach on the second single “Not Surprised,” though the song’s slower, trudging sludge metal allows for a bit more input from the Uniform side. Berdan’s vocals are fiery and upfront once again, devolving into a gnarled noise bomb as the track careens toward its chaotic climax.
Mournful Congregation – “Heads Bowed”
Mournful Congregation have been proliferating funeral doom metal since 1993 and remain one of the most respected band’s in the genre. On the newly released The Exuviae of Gods: Part II EP, the band pays homage to its origins with a re-recording of “Heads Bowed” from the 1995 demo An Epic Dream of Desire. The new version gives the original arrangement a fresh sonic treatment and serves to remind us of how brilliant this band has been from the very beginning.
[song releases midnight 5/26, listened to promo]
Tsjuder – “Prestehammeren”
OG Norwegian black metal outfit Tsjuder unleash the wolves on “Prestehammeren,” a gusty blaster that toes the genre’s delicate balance of thrash riffs and atmosphere. The band keeps it just harsh and uncomfortable enough to avoid any “black ‘n roll” designations — relevant if we’re judging Tsjuder on the scale of kvlt-ness. The band said it best in the press release for the track: “Torture and Revenge!”