Confrontation of Opposites 1995: Dark Forbidden Experiments

The album of this review has been in my possession for some time now and I needed quite a lot of listens in order to understand what the band wants to present. It is a split release in which two bands from Russia takes part, Moriturus and Xynobis. These two bands are the different musical expression of the same musicians and although they follow completely different music orientation, it seems as the one completes the other. “Confrontation of Opposites 1995: Dark Forbidden Experiments” contains three tracks of Xynobis and four of Moriturus all of them written during the period of 1994-1995 with overall duration of about thirty minutes. They present us a harsh, dirty and primitive Black Metal combined with dark ambient/noise.

The Black Metal riffs are harsh, fast and minimalistic, they remind of the old warlike Scandinavian school. The noise/ambient tracks and the elements that exist in the rest of the tracks, they match the Black Metal that they play, they present an experimental sound which is shared between noise/ambient and Black Metal. Their style and sound reminds me a lot of the style and the appetite of experimentation of Ildjarn, surely without reaching his quality. The guitars have harsh and dirty sound, they are played with accuracy and a weird madness which drags the listener into the dark psychological state of the band. The bass is minimalistic and it fills the sound well, but without making anything special. The drums are produced by a drum machine, its sound didn’t annoy me but its lines are repetitive and monotonous. The vocals are harsh, primitive Black Metal vocals, passionate and powerful. Finally, the sound is primitive and dirty. It reminds a lot of the sound of a rehearsal, something that it fits to the style of compositions. The mixture also, it is almost untouched delivering that noise character very intensively throughout the entire album. The lyrics are not contained in the cd and the little information that is contained, it is written in Russian.

The effort of Moriturus and Xynobis for experimentation produced a quite short but interesting result. This album may not reach the quality and inspiration of other bands of the genre, but it is one of the first pieces of the history of noise/ambient/Black Metal that it surely has historical – collective and musical value for the fans of the genre. All those who search such forgotten by time pieces of the genre, you won’t lose your time if you listen to it. The rest of you prefer another album in order to make your first touch with this sound.