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artist: Moonchapel
title: Chasms of Ash and Inequity
year: 2025
genre: Black Metal
type: Album
label: Blackened Label Records
language: English
rel. date: 2025-03-21
source: WEB/MP3
quality: CBR 320kbps / 44.1 kHz / Joint Stereo
runtime: 00:38:04
size: 87.3 MiB / 8 tracks
rip date: 2026-06-17
source url: https://open.qobuz.com/album/zj6e8oifa0mra
tracklist:
01. The Angelic Pathogens Which Spread Their Dystopic Phlegm 4:13
02. From Stardust to Ash and Inequity 3:53
03. To Speak in Verse to Pervert Divinityverminscore and 5:22
Plaguehaunt
04. Verminscore and Plaguehaunt 4:30
05. Dead Forever 6:22
06. Eternal Chasms, Where Hope Is Abandonedarranging War in Heaven 2:39
07. Arranging War in Heaven 4:48
08. Unfurled and Glowing in White-Hot Horror 6:17
release notes:
Moonchapel narrate a clear and engaging current of surrealist darkness
through the bowels of this debut offering, binding the marked aesthetic
colouring around a solidified expression of haunting black metal. The
ferocity of Blasphemy and Profonatica is offset by the uncanny
atmospheres of Beherit or Black Funeral, matching the raw physicality of
the former impulse with the meditative reclusion of the latter.
Tracks are simple and linear in delivery. Riffs flowing in clear logical
sequences. Drums are defined by a monotonous, industrial consistency,
upgrading the music into a muscular, active experience. The immediacy of
this id only compensated by the cerebral deviations introduced partway
through each track, as single guitar lines soar above the cacophony to
deliver an ever opening sophistication of classically evil yet no less
intimidating melodic intent. Something that I've only seen replicated in
Demoncy.
Moonchapel explode the formula of war metal by deconstructing their own
momentum and remaining fixed in place with near monomaniacal
perseverance, something perhaps best illustrated by the slow collapse
that closes off the album on 'Unfurled and Glowing in White-hot Horror'.
Any compositional aspiration attempting to rise above the barbaric rhythm
sequences devolve into plaintive cries of high pitched simplicity,
crushed in place by the chasmic bluntness of the rhythm guitar. Guttural
vocals distorted to the point where they could barely be recognised as
vocals complete the picture, adding their entropic intention to the mix
as the music's solidity slowly unwinds.
Genre and style are merely incidental. Critics fret over their detail
because they are an important shorthand when discussing music, any loss
of precision risks being misunderstood. Hence why their meaning and
history is rigorously and regularly defended. Policing their
misapplication is not mere idle pedantry. Styles, words, genres, these
things bubble up from the underground to the casualised tier, their
meaning and significance being distorted and mistranslated in the
process. Until artists themselves inculcate these inaccuracies, and begin
mistaking aesthetic intent for genre allegiance, and crafting a
compositional language around a set of talking points they believe will
play well with a certain crowd, a shortcut to a readymade audience.
Moonchapel is a reminder that it is not the genres that are flawed, but
our application of them. It is black metal in the tradition of the
Finnish or early North American style. In this sense it builds worlds
within this rather modest remit. It sets clear boundaries on its own
aesthetic and stylistic intention. From this place of clear limitation
grows a cornucopia of artistic currency. Dark passages, ritual
intoxication, studied meditation, and striking barbarism.