CLOAK OF ALTERING - The Night Comes Illuminated With Death

With Cloak Of Altering, the tireless Maurice De Jong revives an old project from the Nineties, Ophiuchus. Anyone who knows the Dutch artist and has followed him for some time should not feel thrown off by this latest variation on black doom-metal. Starting with the one-two punch of "I Diabolus, Fallen And Vengeful" and "Cloak Of Altering", what unfolds is a on speed version of Gnaw Their Tongues, blended with electronic-industrial elements and constantly beset by a whole series of baleful sonic proliferations.

The recordings gathered here span a period from 1996 (the year De Jong began working on his highly idiosyncratic take on black metal, fueled by a deep passion for the fervent Scandinavian scene and the most extreme solutions in the metal and industrial realm) to 2009 (the year the whole thing was completed and released as a free download).

Naturally, before Human Jigsaw Records made this "The Night Comes Illuminated With Death" available in physical format, De Jong dedicated himself again to tape, seeking an even better sonic result. On this front there is nothing to fault: every detail is curated down to the smallest nuance. Unfortunately, though, in 2011 this is a work that already feels largely outdated…

The classical-tinged atmospheres running through the title track or "The Lustful Farçade Of The Madrigals", and the exhausting machine-gun bursts of "Veils Of Stars" and "Golden Radiation Fills The Void" (the latter, however, with lyrical-ambient passages that are not to be scorned), cannot possibly rekindle the interest of those who loved the artist from Drachten's most important works, by now far beyond these still rather "raw" contaminations.

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28/11/2011