Review: Myrrh – Amongst the Wicked

Look up Myrrh, and you’d be fooled into thinking this was going to be yet another lo-fi, second-wave enamoured black metal act. Lone member, the bizarrely named Goatman of Gubbio (perhaps an oblique nod to the famed Wolf of Gubbio mentioned in The Little Flowers of St. Francis?), certainly looks the part, covered in corpsepaint and posing grimly before tombstones in some forgotten cemetery, crucifix in hand. But the music? You’re in for a big surprise.

What greeted me on first listen was anything but what was expected – grumbling, dirty, rotten blackened death metal that thunders along like some relentless bog monster intent on destroying everything in its path. Thing is, it’s not the blackened death metal you might assume it to be; indeed, Myrrh sounds nothing like icons of the style such as Belphegor or A Hill to Die Upon. Instead, Myrrh trades in the super guttural, ugly death metal of bands like Sedimentum and Fetid, but with the relentless approach of war metal acts like Cataclysmic Warfare. Is cavernous black metal a thing? The endless genres and subgenres continue to proliferate.

Regardless – whatever you want to call Myrrh’s style, it’s got my ear. Murky in the extreme, almost caked in slime and rot, every track is a stream of high-treble riffs that sound like a black metal demo from 1993, but played in the manner of a death metal act from the same year. Goatman’s vocals are of the ultra-low type, being barely-decipherable, inhuman growls and groans that almost overtake the music entirely. Only the last track, “Scoring the Flesh” seems to break out of the mold of continual streams of sonic sludge, boasting a thrashier style. 

Myrrh is just one of several unblack metal acts whose members subscribe to Catholicism (others include Toreva, later Reverorum ib Malacht, and Within Thy Wounds), and the Goatman of Gubbio makes no secret of where he lies in terms of his ecclesiology. While more general themes such as the sufferings of Hell and the need for repentance are emphasized, Protestant and evangelical listeners might struggle with some of the lyrical concepts on here (prayers for the dead, medieval practices of penance and mortification). That said, it doesn’t take away from the quality of the music, and to be fair, the kind of self-mortification being talked about here is a controversial topic even amongst Catholics. Bands like Imperial Dusk and Endless Sacrifice can be equally off-putting to some when it comes to their negative takes on Catholicism, but the music is still great. It all just depends on what you’re comfortable with, I suppose.

Bottom-line: if you’re digging the extreme underground sounds of the latest batch of Christian war metal bands, you will probably dig this one. It leans more towards a hybrid style with all the death metal riffing in the background, but it’s straightforward approach definitely places it in the war metal sphere. It’s the musical equivalent of a rotting crypt in a swamp. And if that sounds super inviting to you and you just can’t get enough of the foul noise of the more brutal side of black/death metal, you’ll no doubt be spinning this record on repeat.

Check it out HERE.

For Fans Of: Sedimentum, Cataclysmic Warfare, Lucifer Impaled, Fetid

About Author

Jason McLaren

I’m an Orthodox Christian, have a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies, and have been a metal fan for around a quarter of a century. I’ve never been much of a metal traditionalist, so you won’t normally find me spinning Megadeth albums (as good as they might be). Black, death, goth, grind – that’s my thing. I love to scour the furthest reaches of the underground and bring back the gems I find to show others – bit of a show and tell guy. When I’m not blasting the tunes, I love reading works of a theological/spiritual nature, as well as playing a rousing game of chess.

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