The work of Maurice de Jong (Mories) is certainly open to a bit of debate. Best known for his work as Gnaw Their Tongues, a dark black metal / drone project that regularly plumbs the depths of all things (e)scatological, Mories is a master of provocative, but at times slightly lumpen and predictable, blackened noise. For all the effort that’s gone into the creation of atmosphere in de Jong’s work, at times he can be maddeningly inconsistent in his actual effectiveness.
Spear of Gold and Seraphim, Part One was a good example of how things occasionally end up being slightly underwhelming in Mories’s canon of work. As Aderlating, Mories generally steers himself down a slightly more dark ambient focused route than his Gnaw Their Tongues output, which, with the possible exception of parts of ‘Engel der Wrake’ and most of ‘A New Plaque for Every Triumph’, led to some pretty tedious clanging and hissing, on the aforementioned Spear... Part One.
Thankfully the direct follow-up, although not the first Aderlating release in the interim period, Spear... Part Two is far better. A more consistently interesting record, and also a good deal noisier, this isn’t a million miles away from the finest Gnaw Their Tongues output. There’s a slightly dronier aesthetic, more emphasis on proper harsh noise rather than unintentionally amusing sound effects or samples, and, perhaps most importantly, the mix is better. Spear... Part Two surrounds and slowly envelops the listener in its web of darkness, rather than letting them out every ten minutes to make a cuppa.
Crucially, whereas Spear... Part One felt a bit like an endurance test because it didn’t really do very much over its hour plus duration, Spear... Part Two feels like an endurance test despite being relatively concise at forty-nine minutes in length. It’s claustrophobic dark ambience at its most suffocatingly visceral, with the gut-wrenching vocals particularly proving the most impactful weapon, offering a more directly painful assault than the walls of industrial gothic sound behind them. Fragments of discernible instrumentation, such as piano and strings on the opener ‘Per Luciferum Dominum Nostrum’ and second track ‘Worship of Dead Gods’ respectively, only enhance the forbidding aesthetic, as the world of music is ripped apart by storms of putrid rotting ambience.
Of course, being as prolific as de Jong is, one cannot help but expect a good portion of releases under his various monikers to be disappointing, but most of Mories’s back catalogue is worth at least trying, and Spear... Part Two goes better than that. For fans of black metal / dark ambient / noise hybrids, this is damn near essential.
