Sulfurous Prayers of Blight and Darkness

Here is a split release from two bands that actually sound very similar to each other. Could this be because one half of Sperm of Antichrist is also the only member of Void Meditation Cult? Uh, it could! Regardless of the name change, the musical vision is pretty much identical; this is repugnant blackened doom based around ultra-simplistic riffing, intended to leave the listener in no doubt that some villainous ritual is afoot. Void Meditation Cult, by the way, is a great band name that fits the music herein perfectly. Sperm of Antichrist, by contrast, is not and does not. So maybe that explains it.

In its best moments, there is a sullen sense of groove here that reminds me of a uglier, more primitive companion to Venus Star’s Setyphorous, which was a pleasant surprise for me last year. The riff that enters a couple of minutes into Void Meditation Cult’s Consecrated by Sacrifice, for example, is hellish. Same goes for Sperm of Antichrist’s Serpent Mass Litany. Yes, it sounds amateurish, and is probably one of the most unflinchingly simplistic records I’ve heard for a long time, but this is really the point. I much enjoyed playing this while sat in the dark reading the climactic pages of At the Mountains of Madness. Indeed, this is probably the kind of music the Shoggoths would make if they found the Elder Ones’ black metal albums. A sort of stupider but more horrifying mimicry.

Despite some ghoulish highpoints, it can at other times sound slightly weak and lost- again, a consequence of the low-fi approach. It is not an album to keep you on the edge of your seat, nor one to return to repeatedly to locate hidden depths. Nonetheless, it achieves a measure of distinction, in its own nefarious way.