Martwa Aura - Morbus animus (2020)^{Release ID: 24196}

A forum acquaintance elsewhere on the internet put me onto Martwa Aura during one of the aforementioned forumite's lengthy playlist recommendations for straight up black metal.  In his list of circa twenty albums from various bands I picked out this Polish crew's sophomore full-length from last year as one the standouts.  I would argue that Martwa Aura stray from the conventional bm tag quite often on Morbus Animus.  Yes, the core of the sound is blasting black metal done to a very high standard but these guys have a very melodic edge to their leads especially and are simply great at delivering rhythms full of pace and power to boot.

At the heart of the machine are the vocals of Grzegorz Puszkarek.  His ghastly rasps fill most tracks on the album with a demonic presence that permeates as opposed to dominates.  In the cleaner vocal moments his voice takes on a pagan/folk vibe that works really well also when balanced against that acute melody I mentioned earlier.  Guitarist Cadaveris and Sadogoat are able to take up equal space on the album with a mixture of harsh riffing and soaring melodies that make some parts of the album positively shine.  Even with these more warm sounding moments taken into consideration, the album still leaves a scathing sense of cold in its wake.  Across the five tracks on show here the majority are over the six minute mark so a barrage of blastbeats and tremolos was never going to cut it with such lengthy passages, and Martwa Aura fill the album full of variety without losing any momentum.

The strong rhythm section of O. on the drums and Saathar on the bass are the perfect backdrop to level, balance and support the raging inferno to more melodious movements and thus they are probably best credited for the consistency of the power across Morbus Animus.  Hints of Behemoth creep in with some spoken word passages and the melodies do bring to mind Mgla, but there is no worship of these acts more a respectful nod in their direction before focusing on doing their own thing.  All in all a fine discovery.