Death Like Mass - Matka na sabacie

DEATH LIKE MASS - Matka na sabacie (UNDER THE SIGN OF GARAZEL - CD 2019)

Here’s an album, which I seriously have to recommend to all black metal worshippers. It’s new material from Polish band Death Like Mass, who just unleashed their third EP. This shit is titled “Matka na sabacie” and it is an impressive follower to already killer “Jak zabija diabeł” (2017). As I see it, Death Like Mass belongs to those bands, which you could say stays faithful to the second wave black metal foundations, but managed to execute this raw, vicious and utterly obscure style of music with their own style, playing it a bit differently to 99% of other bands. Which already is a great value of Death Like Mass, but it's good to hear that at the same time their music is simply excellent, thus we have one of the best black metal releases of 2019. It's exactly just like Cultes des Ghoules (speaking of the quality of music), who are such an obvious point of reference to Death Like Mass, not only because both these bands share the same vocalist, but also ‘coz they delve into the same abyss in search for their musical rituals. 

On “Matka na sabacie” Death Like Mass actually outdid themselves, with a surprising presentation of one song only – but this one song is a 30 minutes long black metal masterpiece (and so, here’s one more similarity to Cultes des Ghoules, who are also great specialists in long, expanded tracks, especially on “Coven, or Evil Ways Instead of Love”). And through this half an hour, “Matka na sabacie” doesn’t bore even for a second, this song is amazing with how it develops, with all these ideas, arrangements, diversity, breaks within the song... And finally, with that harshness of black metal, great, simplistic, yet so effective riffage, ability to create ghoulish and sinister atmosphere, so brilliantly underlined by the possessed and very original sounding vocals of Left Hand Trip. Yes, I think that his voice plays an absolutely essential role in the creativity and originality of “Matka na sabacie”. There’s something mesmerizing and almost lunatic in the sound of his howls, what helps to build the tension and evil aura in the music. Obviously Polish lyrics are also an integral and important detail, especially in that spoken fragment of the song. But the whole performance of this howling demon is highly, highly impressive. 

On top of everything, we have excellent production... and is there anything else I need to add? “Matka na sabacie” is one of those releases, which you listen to with great interest, it absorbs fully the listener with its atmosphere and doesn’t let him focus on anything else, but the music alone. And did I mention that the lyrics are from Aleister Crowley’s works? What a shame we cannot read them in the booklet! 

Verdict: 90/100