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Moss, Horrible Night: The Bleeding Years and Other Tales of Terror

It’s been five long years since Southampton, UK, doomers Moss debuted on Rise Above Records with their sophomore album, Sub Templum, and though the band issued a couple EPs and the Never Say Live live album since that release, they’ve been silent since 2010 and emerge now with a new outlook on the full-length Horrible Night. Still aligned to Rise Above, the trio of Olly Pearson (vocals), Dominic Finbow (guitar) and Chris Chantler (drums) have shifted away from the deathly influences that typified their many earlier works in favor of cleaner singing and a darkly psychedelic, cultish sprawl. Where Sub Templum was comprised of four tracks totaling nearly 74 minutes, Horrible Night is more efficient on the whole, clocking in at just over 54 with six tracks, none of which go much past 11. That’s quite a change from songs like “Gate III: Devils from the Outer Dark,” which closed the prior outing at an insurmountable 35:31, but the bigger shift is in Moss‘ actual aesthetic, which is more atmospheric than in the past and echoing its abysmal feel rather than bludgeoning with volume. In some ways, Horrible Night has more in common with latter-day Electric Wizard than did Sub Templum, which was produced by that band’s vocalist, Jus Oborn, but Moss show comparatively little of the same psychotic pop fascination. Songs here like “Dark Lady” and opener “Horrible Nights” have choruses that are memorable and engaging as much as this kind of feedback-drenched morass can be or wants to be, but they’re never rushing to get to them. Or to anywhere else, for that matter.

That’s one factor that Moss have kept consistent with their prior output — they are slowMoss take ultra-thick plod and let it ride for however long they feel it needs to, and while one could easily consider Horrible Night an overall more manageable or accessible record than its predecessor, it’s hardly a comfortable listen. Weary, sluggish groove pervades the verse of “Horrible Nights” (note the ‘S’ at the end, where the title of the album is singular) as Pearson tops Finbow‘s guitar with Sabbathian lines, buried deep but still cutting through the mix, caked in reverb. I suppose compared to some of what Moss has done, this is fast, but put to the scale of most anything else, its lurching still qualifies as extreme — and it’s also probably the most accessible moment of the record — even as it moves into wailing guitar leads and malevolent screams in the second half, feedback setting a bed for chaos reminiscent of early The Wounded Kings at their bleakest or the first Cough full-length. If I’m comparing Moss, who’ve been around for over a decade, to bands getting their start, it’s because they essentially are. Horrible Night covers new ground for them, and even if on paper, their latest work shares elements they’ve used in the past, the reality of the situation makes for a much, much different listen, “Horrible Nights” even going so far as to return to its verse at the end, giving the second half’s chaos a sense of purpose and symmetry as the fadeout leads to the beginning of “The Bleeding Years,” even slower and more ill-meaning.

In terms of its verse, “The Bleeding Years” is less distinct — less catchy, relatively speaking — than “Horrible Nights” or “Dark Lady,” which follows, but at 7:05, it’s the shortest of the songs with vocals, and its largesse of riff covers a lot of ground. Chantler‘s drums hold together the meandering progression well, and as much as the first track telegraphed the new methodology of the band, the second shows Moss are still challenging the listener in their own way. “Dark Lady” — the longest cut at 11:04 — takes hold following a jarring outro guitar deconstruction, the two songs flowing one right into the next, and beings Horrible Night back to more grounded, structured material, its chorus of,

“Explain to me why your mind is so evil?
I think perhaps you’re possessed by the Devil
You’ve cast your spell of lies
There’s nothing left to do
Within this cell you’ve made
I’m looking back at you”

providing the album with its strongest and most resonant hook (not to mention a bit of classic heavy metal misogyny). Again though, Moss don’t oversell it, instead setting up a tortured, lumbering movement that gradually gives way to the full thrust of the rumble underscoring Pearson‘s emotive delivery of the lyrics above. Atmospherically and in its riff, “Dark Lady” holds fast to its initial ideas, and rightly so — it doesn’t need much more than the one riff to get its hypnotically repetitive point across — and as with the opener, a returning verse bookends a dead stop before “Dreams from the Depths” provides a dreary, droning interlude.

The break after “Dark Lady” is well positioned and long enough at 4:18 to signal a change from one movement of Horrible Night to another. A heartbeat comes on at the very end to announce the resurgence of riff that heralds “The Coral of Chaos,” Finbow riffing out layers of impenetrable misery while Pearson somehow manages to cut through. There’s continuity with the first and third track in “The Coral of Chaos,” but both it and the closer, “I Saw Them that Night,” are darker and (seemingly on purpose) less catchy. Finbow‘s guitar shows off a nasty lead tone in the midsection of “The Coral of Chaos,” but soon recedes to the lumbering downer riff from whence it came, setting up the feedback layered into the slowdown at the end that Pearson joins in the last minute. As the finale, “I Saw Them that Night” is a complement to the opener in its pacing, moving from beginning trudgery to a more insistent middle ground that, were it not for some of what Moss have already gotten up to on Horrible Night, would still qualify as plenty slow. Heading toward the eight-minute mark, the guitars swell in volume and feedback takes hold atop Chantler‘s crashing drums to give the record its finish in fallen-apart, noisy fashion. “I Saw Them that Night” may let go of some of the chorus-based momentum that the album built earlier on, but if Moss show anything with their third long-player, it’s that they’re not willing to be beholden even to their own norms, let alone anyone else’s. In its totality, Horrible Night is grim and wretchedly doomed — a work aurally more accessible than Sub Templum but no more compromising in its atmosphere or purpose — and for Moss, it signals a new beginning should they want to continue down this path. I hear little on these tracks that might dissuade them from doing so.

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Rise Above Records

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One Response to “Moss, Horrible Night: The Bleeding Years and Other Tales of Terror”

  1. goAt says:

    I was in a shit mood last night, and this hit the spot for sure!

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