Nocturnal Carnival
Independent
There are some things that you listen to that, after you hear it, you have to question your views about music, life, and everything in between.
This may very well be one of those times.
Mors Omnibus' "Nocturnal Carnival" is an attempt at breaking down perceptions about music and reality, by using various a-tonal melodies, atmospheric synths, and free-time rhythms to create something that cannot be defined.
This is quite frankly very successful at making the listener want to shove a red hot poker through their eye socket, because the music, or shall I say "soundscapes", is painful, agonizing, and terror inducing, making this the perfect soundtrack for an indie horror film, and at times, possibly even a snuff film. In other words, this is fucking brilliant. The gloriously depressive sounds of "Spirit Session 1 and 2" are enough to make the listener not want breathe any more, with the duration of part 2 being a total hypnotic, mindfuck experience. Strewn with old movie samples that just add to the mind bending atmosphere, this album is a total experience into madness, in the most demented and twisted way possible.
"A Dark Walk in a Carnival Park" will fuck you up. Seriously. You have to be a twisted sonofabitch to write something like that, and the complex harmonic structure confounds the listener, lulling into a false sense of security. This song IS the monster under the bed that we were all scared of as kids. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
This is an 80 minute release folks, and the amount of time and effort that went into it must have been astounding. This is not for the squeamish, not for the feint hearted, and not for anyone who gets their musical selections from Total Request Live on MTV or some shit. This is serious music for seriously demented people, and this CRUSHES anything I have heard from Mortiis, or pretty much any of the so-called "ambient" releases in recent years, in my opinion. 14 songs, with the last one being a Vangelis cover, which would probably make a good track for a video game like Amnesia.
The verdict on this is that it should be a resume for a movie scoring contract. It would very likely fit some really artsy, intelligent, but dark and twisted indie film, and probably make a very bad movie much, much better. This is the sort of genre defining music that is rare these days.
Conclusion: Buy this, but beware, you may hate it or get freaked the hell out by the dark brilliance of the songs.
You were warned: -Haniel Adhar