Monday, April 7, 2014

CLOAK OF ALTERING: American Aftermath Broadcasting Mechanized Chaos From Dutch Fiend


As previously confirmed, Crucial Blast will poison the reservoir of humankind this Spring with the release of Plague Beasts, the punishing third full-length from CLOAK OF ALTERING, one of the many monikers/projects of Dutch noise architect, Maurice de Jong, a.k.a. Mories.

Widely known within the darkest recesses of the extreme music underground for his works in Gnaw Their Tongues, Seirom, Aderlating, Mors Sonat, De Magia Veterum and more, with CLOAK OF ALTERING, Mories channels his deep fascination with the more mutated realms of electronically-damaged symphonic and industrial black metal into a brutally fragmented form of mechanized pandemonium. The man's most twisted COA concepts yet come snarling forth on his Crucial Blast debut, Plague Beasts; seven new movements resulting in a thirty-eight minute blackwarped techno-celestial mindfuck.

Ahead of its release, curiously brave scribes at the American Aftermath colony have scrutinized and disbursed a sample from CLOAK OF ALTERING's Plague Beasts, with the works' middle track, "Chaos Magician Of The Abyss," issuing the following statement on their findings: "This is yet another solo project by Gnaw Their Tongues only man Mories except this time around we get more black metal goodness with less of the noise. Of course, being a product of Mories, it's still odd and off its rocker, but it's an amazing tune nonetheless."

Survey the damage created by "Chaos Magician Of The Abyss" RIGHT HERE.

The opening/title track to the album is also playing at the Crucial Blast Bandcamp alongside preorders; tune in and get nuked HERE.

With Plague Beasts, Mories/CLOAK OF ALTERING delivers a ferocious affront to black metal form and structure, combining his otherworldly strain of sweeping symphonic black metal with bursts of intense electronic chaos, waves of nebulous synthesizer and spastic rhythmic violence that, at times, feels more like something you'd hear off of a Planet Mu 12", at times resembling some twisted nightmare version of prog rock keyboard freak-outs, or vintage 16-bit game soundtracks being fused to the gristle and graveyard stink of second wave black metal. More than anything else from Mories, this stuff is closest in spirit to the malevolent necro-industrial and fractured drug-fueled machine-ecstasies of bands like Aborym, Blacklodge, Dodheimsgard, Mysticum, and Abigor. But as with anything that this guy is involved with, Plague Beasts seethes with a deliriously demonic atmosphere entirely its own.

Plague Beasts will be set loose via digital delivery and six-panel CD digipak on April 29th.
  

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