This is the second album from US black metal band Mnajdra.
Following hot on the heels of last year’s self titled debut comes In the Name of the Goddess; 50 minutes of apocalyptic modern black metal. Mnajdra’s malefic music has ascended to a higher level of spectral might with this new album.
In the Name of the Goddess is a melting pot of acidic melodies and corrosive atmosphere. It’s densely heavy in a way that black metal usually isn’t, and has a crushing production that oozes menace. Mnajdra adopt a mood-focused approach to songwriting, and the music is horrendously atmospheric. Yet, it also has a venomous bite that’s lethal; the album has an intensity to it in places that’s visceral, bringing a multitude of grim horrors to the world in sheets of oppressive darkness.
Mnajdra’s music is ripe with sludge heaviness, doom malevolence, and dissonant shading. Its component parts slither and coalesce into a distinctly individual entity, one that’s imbued with a malignant life of its own. The songs bleed with this otherworldly presence; it lurks behind the music with a corrupted sentience that seems like it’s trying to claw its way into our reality.
In the Name of the Goddess is an immersive record that cements Mnajdra as a rising power to watch in the black metal underworld. It’s absorbing in its atmospheric splendour, and a record that unveils its dire revelations most clearly only after repeated exposure.
In the Name of the Goddess is a textured nightmare given form. An essential experience for connoisseurs of underground black metal darkness.
Wonderbox Metal 