VOËMMR 'O Ovnh Intot Adr Mordrb'

A so-far-shadowy entity, VOËMMR hail from the currently-hot Portuguese raw black metal scene. Specifically, the band is a part of the clandestine Aldebaran Circle, which includes Ordem Satânica, Trono Além Morte, and Occelenbriig. Like those contemporaries, VOËMMR eschews any sort of social media presence - or any internet presence at all, for that matter - preferring instead to work on their bewitching black metal conjurations far away from any sort of ego-enhancing public awareness; their means and methods are, rather, rooted in the ancient ways of the '90s, like their massively prolific (and massively fuck-off) forebears in the French Black Legions. Continuing the compelling uncomfort of their 'Sombr Moebrd' demo from 2018, this inscrutable and stratifying cult continues their assured, almost effortless plunge into the abyss with a brand-new 44-minute recording. If VOËMMR's alternately celebrated/feared debut album, 2017's 'Nox Maledictvs', was the sound of the cult crawling through the shadows for the first time - and in the process, locating shimmeringly ugly magickal frequencies, sick and rotten and malnourished yet somehow strangely beautiful in their malodorous malaise - then 'O Ovnh Intot Adr Mordrb' sounds like that cult striding boldly beyond the shadows. That signature sound, as lasciviously laid out on 'Nox Maledictvs', is here more urgent, more manic, more hysteric, the ritualism of yore reigned into an altogether more focused maw of desolation and dread: pounding, persistent, passionate. As ever, their usage of unnervingly insistent organ has developed into a perversely beautiful/eerie counterpoint to the ripped-raw black metal beneath - as above, so below - thus making VOËMMR's iteration of black metal all the more idiosyncratic. Furthering that idiosyncrasy is their continued usage of the strange, cryptic dialect created by legendary French forebears Belketre. Enigmas either die or grow stronger. With 'O Ovnh Intot Adr Mordrb' do VOËMMR prove the latter.