Mithridatum unveils its first album.
Created in 2022 in the United States around Lyle Cooper (guitar/bass/drums, Abhorrent, Absvrdist, ex-The Faceless), Geoffrey Ficco (vocals, Ys, ex-The Faceless, ex-Orgone) and Marlon Friday (guitar, Abhorrent, Absvrdist, Crumbling Mirth…), the band signed with Willowtip Records for the release of Harrowing.
The album starts with Sojourn, a first track which immediately spreads its dissonance coupled with an aggressive and thick rhythmic as well as massive screams. The band doesn’t hold back when it comes to mixing raw darkness and mastery of the heavy atmosphere, making these impenetrable waves fascinating just like on Silhouette and its heady leads. The near-incessant blast gives the throbbing sound a heavy rage before the rhythmic patterning becomes more catchy with Old School Black Metal patterns borrowed from the energetic roots, but the heavy oppression quickly resurfaces to lead us into Mournful Glow, a composition linking some slowness with the band’s haunting but extremely dark sound. Screams find their place in this ocean of dissonance again, letting blast and complex riffs express themselves before leads ignite, making us sail us with them towards nothingness, which will be broken by Lower Power, a slightly more accessible composition which uses Prog elements to give relief to its soaring harmonics under the double kick steamroller. The track is quite short but just as worked as the previous ones, taking this veil of oppressive dissonance back before The Passageway comes to close the album with similar tones, easily coupling darkness and oppression to lively patterns and crushing parts made of double kick and heavy riffs.
When Mithridatum begins, the band doesn’t leave us much time to breathe. If some patterns are more aggressive than others, Harrowing permanently chokes us under its dark and heavy dissonance, while offering worked compositions.
80/100
