Rating: 6.9

Country: USA

Release Date: 2006
(re-released 2007)

Record Label: Autopsy Kitchen

Track list:
1. Sorcery
2. Eyes And Shadows
3. Asylum
4. Silent Gates
5. The Tormented Mind
6. Macabre
7. Where Ghosts Dwell
8. Departed Spirits
9. Land Of The Unholy
10. Blood From The North
11. Suffer In The Embrace Of The Cold
12. The Cruel Silence Of The Sky
13. Coffin Door
14. Twilight Of War
15. Flesh
16. The Eulogy Of One Poignant Ra'Por

Total playing time 54:46

Band Website: Ensepulchred

Ensepulchred - Suicide In The Winter's Moonlight

O. Barker - Keyboards, Drum Machines, Guitar
D. Redington - Vocals, Noise, Bass
J. Shipley - Vocals

When I heard I was receiving a re-release of Ensepulchred's debut album, I didn't quite know what to expect. The Night Our Rituals Blackened the Stars proved quirky and somewhat flawed, but evoked a sense of cinematic playfulness that made the album's wildly inaccurate hype of "Emperor meets Xasthur" seem like a pale dismissal in comparison. Suicide in the Winter's Moonlight is more or less more of the same, which is probably a poor way to start this review, considering it's intentionally unlike anything else out there. Imagine dreary stretches of Casio dirge, stuttering electronics, and the occasional unassuming (what sounds like) xylophone counterpoint swelling around tinny programmed drums and tweaked out static manipulation, sprinkled with the occasional sample from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and various documentary clips of morbid subject matter, and you'll come pretty close to where Ensepulchred lie. It's sort of a noxious stew of Limbonic Art, Merzbow, and Goblin. Clearly, polarizing genre purists need not apply.

The performance itself is skeletal. The vocalist sort of sermonizes with a trollish, effect-loaded croak; nothing terribly exciting or bad, but it would be nice if he didn't feel the apparently insatiable urge to be saying something every second of the album. The beats are metronomic. The bass...? don't look at me. These minimalistic arrangements exist to singlemindedly evoke an atmosphere that's quite harrowing and eerie, but not necessarily in a skin-crawling Abruptum kind of way; some parts -- the last minute of "Land of the Unholy," for instance -- are quite pristine, while the song "Macabre" sounds like it could have come from one of the sweeping chamber music segments of Sigh's Hail Horror Hail.

90% of the time, the guitar's close to inaudible. At the climax of the song "Flesh," some vague traces of what sounds like a lead emerge, but buried as a spectral blur streaking beneath layers of 70's Italian horror cheese. Most of the time, the guitar's limited to a hint of white noise in the foreground trailing behind the keyboards as a lead instrument, similar to the German dark ambient/black metal act Vinterriket, except inspired by Dawn of the Dead rather than winter and forests. It's sorta bad at face value, but in a good kind of way -- anyone who's grabbed by movie titles like "Boa vs. Python" should know what I mean. (Not to say Boa vs. Python was a good movie, because it was far from it. I wanted to see exploding helicopters and terrified pedestrians as promised on the DVD cover, not GCI snake cunnilingus. But I digress...)

Balance is something Ensepulchred need to work on. There are sixteen songs here, most of which are barely three minutes. Aside from a few highlights, they tend to plod along without allowing themselves room for much development, therefore they tend to bleed into eachother. And even when they do have enough space, it's like they don't know what to do with it. Just when the last song gains momentum and broadcasts some well-structured material -- *bzzfhhzhzz* -- the track is abducted by a sheet of bubbling, hissing noise drone. This is scarcely forgiven by the virtue of the fact the album comes off as a fictional soundtrack, which doesn't really have to play by the compositional rules if it achieves the atmosphere for which it sets out.

Ensepulchred are often kind of stumbing and inept, but also weird and strangely addicting. I recommend this as more of an obscure curiosity than anything. Like a monster suit in an old horror movie, Suicide in the Winter's Moonlight is not always convincing, and sometimes you can even see the zipper on the back, but it's not without its esoteric charm.

February 7th, 2008