This is the debut album from one-man black metal band Hasard.
Malivore contains 45 minutes of dark, nightmarish black metal. It’s a dissonant, avant-garde style, infected with bleak atmosphere and classical symphonic influences. For a rough guide, think of bands such as Ævangelist, Abyssal, Akhlys, and Blut Aus Nord.
The music is suffocating and harsh, drenching the listener in a sickly miasma of tortured, twisted horror and torment. Enshrouded in esoteric moods and ripped through with spectral terror and malignant daemonic aggression, Malivore is a spiteful, malevolent entity that revels in its atypical delivery and dramatic flourishes.
The music manages to be both impenetrably off-putting, and engagingly immersive at the same time. At times it’s definitely closer to one side of this scale than the other, but it’s a balancing act that the artist walks skilfully. The sheer grim hostility of parts of the music is wonderfully offset by its atmospheric qualities, and while both aspects are impressive, it’s when they frequently truly work together to create a towering edifice to captivating darkness that the best results are usually achieved.
Malivore is a malformed thing of warped beauty and infernal splendour. The artist behind Hasard has crafted a journey of compelling atmospheric harshness. It’s an album that doesn’t reveal its secrets easily, but one that definitely rewards the intrepid explorer. Labyrinthine black metal art.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 