Mo’ynoq Devastate With Their Crushing Black Metal Debut ‘Dreaming in a Dead Language’

North Carolina’s Mo’ynoq take no prisoners on their utterly ravenous debut album Dreaming in a Dead Language, out in full January 11.

They’re much less concerned with fitting themselves into familiar patterns in extreme metal and sound more interested in contorting the framework they operate in to their own liking. A number of unique musical flourishes throughout the album inject a sense of chaos, even more than that traditionally found in black metal like Mo’ynoq make.

None of their unique flairs detract from the epic, towering feel of their work’s sound. In other words, they always maintain their attachment to a core to leave devoted extreme metal fans salivating. Their new record looms over the listener like a crumbling monument to pain, as the band indulge in plenty of blast beats, bellowed vocals, and relentless and unique guitar swings just comprehensible enough to feel like they’re mercilessly thrashing you against some rocks at the foot of their monument.

At times, Dreaming in a Dead Language feels difficult to place. These songs don’t sound like the latest in the long line of European black metal that has either a directly occult or natural world-inspired feel, for instance. There’s not really any majesty here — just death, destruction, and the chilling misery of souls crushed into the ground.

The pained vocals emerging in the midst of the overwhelming soundscape of grinding intensity drive this feeling home. Wherever this album emerges, there’s no hope. There’s no future. There’s only the now as the music sinks further and further into a whirlpool of foreboding and gripping chaos.

One might say that the album feels like a sonic representation of the hurricane of loss that so many fear looms over the United States and rest of the West. We are not as secure as some would have us believe, as the leading effects of that storm already make themselves known.

Mo’ynoq make music reminiscent of Panopticon in that both artists are carving out a picture of the emotional devastation wrought in the time since the forebears of modern black metal first made their appearance. Mo’ynoq sound like a uniquely and strikingly American black metal band, filling new editions of the musical history books with what happened here.

5/5 Stars

Listen below via Bandcamp