Album Review: Mansion, Second Death
Posted in Reviews on January 24th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Returning after four-plus years presumably spent repenting for how good their first record was, Finnish heavy cultists Mansion offer Second Death as the follow-up to 2018’s First Death of the Lutheran (review here) and bring even more sinister atmospheres and religious authoritarianism to bear across seven songs and 49 minutes of unrelenting commitment to aesthetic and presentation, sex and death. They remain true to their founding basis in exploring the ideas and practices of the Kartanoist sect in the first half of the 20th century led by Alma Kartano, a role played with if not exactly fully embodied by the band’s own Alma, who is introduced with due theatricality by fellow vocalist Osmo on opener “Sword of God,” full of warnings to the righteous and sinners alike of deathly penance to be paid.
The eight-piece band — Alma and Osmo singing, Jaakob and Samuel on guitar, Immanuel on bass, Matti-Juhani on the crucial organ, Aatami on drums (also guitar) and Mikael with lyrics — are malevolent in spirit and patient in the delivery of their material, as demonstrated early with the choral intro “Procession” before “Sword of God” begins its rollout, in the buildup of the second half of layered vocal highlight “No Funeral,” in the ambient transitions between songs throughout seemingly contributed by Juhana that make the record so effective in never quite letting you go until entire mass has ended, or in the chugging low end and semi-industrial wash that serves as the payoff for centerpiece “Heathen Hole,” that song something of an encapsulation of Mansion‘s take on making doctrine out of kink and vice versa.
As lush in its production — recording, mixing and mastering took place at Noise for Fiction in Turku and was helmed by Joona Lukala — as it is resonant in its darkness, Second Death answers back to the realizations of Mansion‘s first album with the increased dramaturge of “In the Court of the Sorrowless,” which moves from its slowly unfolding hook into an actual trial in its second half backed with chastising and foreboding lines of keyboard, far away percussion and rumbling bass that gradually give over to the transition to “Second Death” itself, the march of which is immediate and answers back to “First Death” from the debut in its emphasis on songwriting. Like “Sword of God” — which boasts the chorus, “Don’t break the rules, little boys and girls/There’s nothing out there for you in the world” in a tidy summary of the cult’s self-imposed misanthropy as led by Kartano — and “No Funeral,” “You Are Suspicious” still to come and “Heathen Hole,” the title-track is thoughtfully composed and engaging, mixed for depth and wholly immersive even as it willfully slogs (flogs?) in tempo and declares a soul-death in a swirl of howls and consuming doom that would be ecstatic were it not so menacing and implicitly violent.
This is the balance Mansion ultimately cast with Second Death, between individual songs standing themselves out from the collection — “In the Court of the Sorrowless” has its hook as well, but is more distinguished by the aforementioned trial, which, by way of a spoiler: divorce not granted — even as they place emphasis on drawing them together through theme, of course, and with the atmospheric stretches that lead from one piece to the next. Also there’s just more sex. First Death of the Lutheran wasn’t lacking, by any means, but Mansion more fully convey the bound-for-hypocrisy tenet of celibacy and theorize Alma‘s various punishments — “I shall whip you good,” she croons before the chorus on “You Are Suspicious” — as about domination as much as contrition before one’s god. As the leader of the movement, she is the god and her will, thematically speaking, is cast across the entire record. They end side A with “Heathen Hole.” How much clearer could they possibly make it?
And maybe there’s a winking sensibility behind some of that, but what matters most is that Mansion are completely without irony in their presentation. Straight-faced. I’m pretty sure putting your tongue even in your own cheek is a sin in Kartanoism. But that is the way it has to be, because the group simply wouldn’t work otherwise. Mansion would be another cult doom band, if one with a gimmick. And no, I’m not saying that Osmo actually lives in fear of Alma or that the band are practicing Kartanoists in their private lives, but like good theatre, they’re able to transport their listeners into a world where that is the case, and to tell their stories in such a way that the backdrop of fanaticism is unflinching, unquestioned. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually being hunted in “Sword of God,” because the song, like the rest of the album that follows, is so well crafted that its, ahem, procession, is followable without having to continually suspend disbelief.
Right into the riffy turn that marks the crescendo of “You Are Suspicious” with the arrival of the buzzsaw guitar solo at 6:33 into its total 9:27 — an extended edition features as a bonus track on the CD with additional ambience at the beginning and guitar by Henrik — departing from the earlier organ-inclusive death-doom-worthy plod into a faster moment of tension-release, Mansion keep hold of the consciousness, and with intricate arrangements of vocals, guitar and bass and keys, they’re able to portray ascetism without any actual aural drudgery, or at least no more than is intended. They are punishing sinners, after all.
Be it the duet undertaken by Osmo and Alma on “Heathen Hole” or the severity of the lumber behind them in “Second Death” itself, the melody that seems to break through the early going of “In the Court of the Sorrowless” or the build back to full-volume crux with the above-quoted admonition in “Sword of God,” Second Death is disturbing in its beauty in exactly the way it’s supposed to be. It solidifies some aspects of the first record while progressing in sound and scope overall, and weaves its holy retribution with purpose and mystique, of and at once outside genre for residing on its own level of execution. Sex, death, violence, mystique and control. Mansion bask in these notions and, centering their theme as they do, use them to manifest the puritanical ideal of who they are as a band, conceptually and practically.
