French band Haemoth “supports all that can contribute to the ruin of the human being. All forms of depravity, destruction and hate must be preached”. These “hateful hellmongers channel pestilence, corruption and occult ritual”. So it’s Black Metal. I cannot help but wonder what the hateful hellmongers have been doing in the 7 years since their last album “Vice, Suffering and Destruction”. Have they spent it in prison, drinking blood perhaps or maybe taking embroidery classes? I think we should be told.
“Odium”, which starts the album off, is indeed from the deepest recesses. It sounds like it is about to burst into a maelstrom of fury or even Black Metal melody, but it does neither. This is clever. The mood is continued into “Slaying the Blind”, which takes a different direction musically by breaking into hissing and creepy nastiness. This stuff gets into your head. The fear is in the fact that it’s coming rather than having the known sensation of it being here. Now it needed to develop into still darker atmospheric territory. After a pause “Demonik Omniscience” starts where we left off. There’s more fury in the drums. At this stage it’s like Limbionic Art of “The Ultimate Death Worship” era without the added interest. But an evil atmosphere is created. The guitar cultivates the nastiness while malevolent whisperings and the ominous tone of the organ break up the monotony. The track becomes mechanical. The organ smacks of ritual and machinery and we seem to end in no man’s land. “Spiritual Pestilence” is slower and more pedestrian. The guitar sound swings to and fro. If the aim is to numb the senses, it’s succeeding. Then we hear buzzing and throbbing sounds like those of a generator … I am reminded of Dark Fortress now … and then to wake us out of this slumber, there’s a violent lurch and a section of impassioned Black Metal. That’s more like it. But then repetitiveness runs through it again. There is industrial cacophony at the end but it’s overdone.
From “Disgrace” we seem to return to the aura of the previous tracks. “Disgrace” is malevolent for sure but the point has already been made. “Son of the Black Light” reverts to being slow and nasty. There’s nothing new. Creepiness returns on the final track “.. And Then Came the Decease …”. It speeds up gradually. Now the drums are talking bad language, and we get the sound of lingering death, reinforced by the vocalist’s pain. After an industrial section, it slows down to a crawl and a mind-infecting guitar rhythm, turning positively rancid. This is the sound of horror. Manic organ tones resound through the nightmare. The constantly developing “.. And Then Came the Decease ..” was my highlight and what I’d been looking for throughout the album.
This album came with grandiose claims. I felt that it ran out of steam, only regaining ground at the end. It didn’t live up to the hype. “In Nomine Odium” is good in parts but a deficiency in imagination meant for me that it wasn’t as toxic and noxious as is claimed.
http://www.debemur-morti.com
Andrew Doherty
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