text: Jean Relapse
Mithridatic
Miserable Mircale
Kaotoxin Records
March 11th, 2016
‘A raging heart needs its supply‘ are the first words of an album that will embody the result of pain and hate combined. Mithridatic, a band born in 2007 in Saint-Etienne, France. After a break in 2011 until 2013, these guys from the French coal-mining city are back with a new drummer and inexhaustible rage on Kaotoxin Records. Good thing is, when your new drummer is none less than Kevin Paradis, you can express anger and violence quite easily as the guy played for various bands including Svart Crown, Melechesh or Agressor.
‘Straight like a warm bullet to a sun that never sets‘ would be the lyrics describing the album way better than I could. The band mixes various influences, all of them being digested and mastered. The guitarists will make you hear Morbid Angel and feel Mayhem, the singer will throw Revenge and Eyehategod to your face, the drummer is out of this earth and of course, the bassist will support that chaos. From all that results a blackened death album where fast-paced parts will blow your mind and where mid-tempos will break your neck.
‘You can’t harm a dead, life must remain!‘ The lyrics, highly inspired by Antonin Artaud and Henri Michaux (Miserable Miracle being a direct reference to the latest), are striking with passion and authenticity. Supported by macabre riffs (I Will Harm always make me feel uncomfortable), the band really manages to create a strange, psychedelic and morbid atmosphere.
‘I’m the owner of the temple of my pain, and it’s worth it!‘ The album isn’t perfect though. Kevin Paradis, being as excellent as you may know, strikes constantly and never lets the other instruments breathe. It might be done on purpose, as the album is dense, but it can make it tiring at some point. This is not an album that you could listen twice in a row, being exhausted and sometimes frustrated by the composition, in which drums are omnipresent. Some songs could also be longer. When the band creates a gloomy and mournful sound, the listener needs time to enter the void, but on songs such as Oxydized Trigger Sabotage, I felt things were rushed through.
This debut album is nevertheless not something you’ll hear everywhere, and surprises with its mastery and maturity. Enter the ‘vitrified desert, fulgurite warm mirror, tremendous energy…‘
THE GOAT TAVERN 