Morne contemplates the decline of humanity for its fifth album.
To celebrate the American band’s eighteenth birthday, Milosz Gassan (guitar/vocals), Paul Rajpal (guitar), Morgan Coe (bass) and Billy Knockenhauer (drums) sign with Metal Blade Records, announcing the release of Engraved With Pain.
Engraved with Pain, the eponymous track, is the first of the four to plunge us into its icy darkness, which begins with some rather ominous ambient noises, joined by an initial airy riff and catchy drums. The mix also welcomes some heady lead parts making the sound even heavier and more haunting, before muffled screams appear in this suffocating haze that eventually adopts a rather jerky rhythm, before giving way to Memories Like Stone and its more energetic tones, which nonetheless keep a relatively dissonant yet hypnotic approach. The unhealthy intriguing influences are perfectly integrated into the compact basis where double kick and raucous screams meet before a much slower and more impressive central braking before returning to the vocal parts, then leads guide us to Wretched Empire and its Industrial influences supported by a fairly simple rhythmic. The riffs obviously get stronger, allowing the band to lock us in under their impenetrable curtain, from which a few more chaotic spikes occasionally emerge, before the sound calms down towards the end, before moving on to Fire and Dust, the longest and final composition, which once again sticks to fairly simple patterns with soaring saturated harmonics. We find slightly more melodic touches underneath the vocalist’s near-continuous howls, as well as an especially intense solo, which finally reverts to a more noisy approach when the sound breaks, but drums give the rhythm an extra fix of energy, making it almost majestic before letting it gradually fade away.
All hope seems in vain with Morne, who offers us the perfect soundtrack to the end of times on Engraved With Pain. No need for violence for the quartet, who manage to annihilate all will to live thanks to dissonant haunting riffs.
95/100