UNHOLY MATRIMONY ‘Croire, Décroître’ (Deepsend) RATING: 6/10 Buy now

By JEFF MAKI

Describing Croire, Décroître, the new album from Vladimir Cochet of Mirrorthrone and Weeping Birth, is a daunting task. Yes, it's black metal, but a maelstrom of relentless chaos is what I hear. The songs, played really fast and in a monotonous tone, combined with Marduk- and Gorgoroth-style vocals, send the listener into a hypnotic trance. It offers no breaks amd its goliathian-length song, with more half seemingly stretching beyond the 10-minute mark. It's cold, it's dark and it's bleak. It's got a certain unsettling atmosphere, I'll give it that.

Also, this solo outing is from Switzerland, with all vocals sung in the native tongue (I think). Unholy Matrimony is not a band but an entity, a one-man studio project from Cochet—he literally performs the entire album.

Maybe I was tired or sick when I listened to this, but some strange events took place during the experience—my head began to spin, my vision became slightly blurred, sounds seemed as if they were further and further away, eventually ending with me blankly staring at the computer screen for an undetermined amount of time, unsure of what had just occurred. It's all as if Unholy Matrimony is using this album to hypnotize the listeners, as part of some underground cult. OK, maybe not, but consider yourself warned.