Endless Dismal Moan - Lord of Nightmare (2006)

While I absolutely enjoyed everything Chaos9 released during his lifetime, his sophomore effort, 'Lord of Nightmare' utterly defines black metal excellence.

Lord of Nightmare much like his other work is that of a nightmarish occurrence. I honestly can’t say when the last time was that I experienced such a frightening, gripping, hallucinating, spellbindingly evil recording as this one. Seriously the riffs in this thing send shivers up and down my spine, the hairs on my arm standout up and quiver, and as I continue on listening I feel my very thoughts might betray me to do something wicked. The guitars tend to have this very mesmerizing and doom-ish like feeling to them that draws you in and simply wont let you escape. The riffs are extraordinarily dark and horrifying giving me that same feeling I caught when I first discovered black metal music years ago.

Amongst these calamitous chords are brutally programmed drums that at no point sound human, but more like some sort of futuristic death contraption hooked up to my psyche. When played at blistering fast speeds they give the music this harsh industrial drum sound that reminds me of Mysticum, and I fucking love Mysticum! Plus with eerie synth that brings me back to the first Emperor album, random piano tinkling's and vocals, which are high pitched throat lacerating screams of agony. It’s impossible to decipher whether or not Chaos9 is screaming in English or Japanese, but one thing for sure when you combine these screams with his fearsome music the results are quite satisfying for the deranged and angered listeners that EDM no doubt touched home with. Yes, you can bet you’re in for one tremendous journey with this recording.

‘Thirst’ for example starts out with a ghostly synth melody, where soon raw otherworldly hypnotic guitars enter the song, and the destruction viciously spreads and consumes your very mortal essence from you. ‘ENDLESS DISMAL MOAN [9 to Death]’ again scares the living hell out of me, opening with a light synth melody, soon guitar feedback and harsh noise roll up, and torturous serpent like screams began to address you for nine minutes of throbbing brilliance. The title track or 'I.S.L.N.W.D.' are immense too and depending on how fucked up you are may become your new favorite songs after hearing them.

Sometimes raw vicious black metal, sometimes doomy and ambient, but always something beyond simple description, Endless Dismal Moan was outstanding! To call this anything less than a masterpiece would be wasted, as this is one of the scariest and quite simply one of the best black metal records I've personally ever heard.

平和のうちに残り、Chaos9！

Endless Dismal Moan - Curse of Underground (2010)

On June 25th, 2008 the fate of Endless Dismal Moan was sealed forever when sole member Chaos9 left this world by his own hands. Behind him he left three unique albums of raw mesmerizing black metal that was not quite exactly like any other band I'd heard before. Oddly enough, exactly a year later the king of pop, Michael Jackson died, but I regress.

According to the label this release had been planned long before Chaos9's suicide, and as such it shouldn't be viewed as a compilation of unreleased recordings, but as an actual fourth and final release for EDM. Interestingly the release is incredibly simple; just a slim DVD case, few liner notes, seven untitled songs and one of Chaos9's painting's as a cover artwork. Nevertheless this is some strong material from Chaos9.

Both past releases and this fourth album titled, 'Curse of Underground' finds Chaos9's music within his own little twisted dark black metal corner. Showing traits from the raw necro black metal style of Ildjarn mixed with perhaps the sound of Emperor's first album plus some influences from the industrial and Gothic scene is one way you could describe EDM's music, though I always found it to be a challenge when it would be simpler to say this is the music of nightmares come true. Sometimes unforgivably fast with industrialized programmed percussion and raw visceral guitar work, while sometimes deathly slow and atmospheric with haunting keyboards and one of the most sadistic voices ever caught on tape. EDM was truly unique and even these seven final songs here prove just that.

It's unfortunate that Chaos9 choose the path of suicide, especially when I feel he had a lot more to give and a lot more listeners to discover his work. At least he left us with four great albums of some of the darkest evilest black metal I've personally ever heard.