Moluchtas – Telos Terminus

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Mystery often surrounds black metal artists. What motivates them? What’s their musical ambition? In this case, who are MOLUCHTAS ? Some prefer to retain a low social media profile, forcing the listener to focus entirely on the musical experience. All I can tell you is that MOLUCHTAS are a one person project from Belgium (I’ll refer to MOLUCHTAS in the third person and as ‘the band’, just for ease of writing). Sadly, I’ll get this straight of the bat. This is going to be my harshest review to date. I take no pleasure in this, but hopefully my comments help artists reflect and seek to improve.

Production wise; honestly, I think I produced better projects when I was in secondary school. What brand of snare do MOLUCHTAS use? Do they even use a snare, because I can barely hear it as the drums are very faint in the recording. Vocally, there is pretty much one tone throughout, a sort of faint growl in which the lyrics are nearly impossible to detect. This could be in English, French, Flemish, Wookie; I don’t know. It’s hard to get people to invest in your music or story if there’s no discernable lyrical content. The guitars sound fuzzy and distorted, not in the good kind either. Doom metal bands are built around having retrograde deliberately dirty sounding guitars. Here though, it just sounds rushed and lazy, and a far cry from the high quality production values that are available to musicians in their home set ups today. If this was the finished product I had spent my hard earned money on, I’d honestly be demanding a refund!

After listening to the opening minute or so to “Surrender to the Void”,  I was loving what seemed to be a blackened doom metal vibe. That slow sludgy texture (which I’ll return to later). However, after the speed and blast beats kicked in, that’s where it started going downhill. Don’t get me wrong, I love that speed and intensity, but there needs to be some kind of build towards it, and slow progression towards that crescendo. Otherwise, it’s hard to appreciate that mind-blowing intensity when it’s been in front of you for several minutes. I thought the band brought some credibility back during “The Awakening”. The cathedral style organ opening was in your face and definitely added contrast. The use of synths was more subtle in this song and was definitely needed. More importantly, I liked it when the band went down the slow groovy sludgy approach. I honestly think this is the band’s strength, going down this slower path. It ties in better with the lower production values too. There are other examples of when the band show some promise, especially during The “Quintessence of Emptiness”. The rhythm section holds down the fort in a tight rhythmic pattern, whilst the guitars hit a solid tremolo guitar pattern. When the blast beat kicks in, you can feel the contrast and it makes sense.

Overall, there’s occasional signs of promise although some major reworking is needed for this to have any kind of credibility.

Songwriting: 5
Musicianship: 4
Memorability: 4
Production: 3