Fermenting Innards - Myst (1995)

Myst was a case of instant jealousy after a friend of mine picked it up on one of our trips a few towns over to an import record shop. There were 2-3 of those in the region and pretty much the only places where we could sample and purchase a lot of underground European releases from labels that we would otherwise have had to mail out to. Much of this stuff was black metal, melodic death, folk, Goth or doom, but there were also a handful of gems that we'd more closely associate with pure death, and even though Fermenting Innards' one full-length is more of a  black/death hybrid than the previous EP, it still surprised me at just how seamlessly it mixed the two. Regardless, as soon as I heard this, I knew it should have gone home with me instead of my friend, who would never give it the love that I could, and thus I had to instantly burn a copy until I could fetch my own...which I believe I have lying around somewhere in storage, but my brain fogs, and it's possible that I lost it along the way or have a bad memory. Basically, good readers, you need to send me all your Fermenting Innards CDs stat.

Myst definitely starts more on the black metal side, with an amazing, almost militant dark ambient synth intro, and then a gorgeously textured, moonlit volley of blasting with some brooding, effective synths behind it in the title track, almost with the feel of something like earlier Dimmu Borgir. This track is immortally catchy, but definitely the substrate of rhythm guitars has a churning, death metal quality that will manifest more prominently elsewhere on the album, like the astonishingly good track "Those Burning Thorns", with an amazing blend of chords and melodies that almost write their own melodic death metal language akin to Finland's masters Demilich. The entire album is like this, a veritable riff-fest which can effortlessly shift between the two styles, though I think death metal covers a little more of the actual 47 minutes of the album (the black metal aesthetics return in a big way later on tracks like "The Rising in Northern Storm" and "Svartfoldet hat"). The vocals are a great hybrid of growls and rasped, often 'harmonized' with others, and the guitars have an atmospheric, washed out tone to them which keeps them fresh. The drum mix is pretty solid, the cleaner guitars transcend into the distortion well enough, the low end murky and thick.

Perhaps its this hybridization, or lack of full commitment to one of its two halves that held Fermenting Innards back from more success? I know that we often give that same tag to groups like Dissection, but here it really felt like walking straight down the line on those few blended tracks. There are a few odd choices, like they include a cover of Nirvana 2002's "Mourning" which feels closer to the original and thus out of place to the Germans, or the one holdover "Eternal Sadness" from the EP, which they've given a Paradise Lost Gothic spin complete with deep clean vocals, but these are both enjoyable, they just give the album a slight incongruity of identity, and I can understand why some might have found it too incoherent. For me, it still sounds as fresh and fantastic and well-written as the day I first heard it, and will always remain a gem, from the weird artwork to the mid-90s production. I believe two of the members were also a part of Golem, another excellent band off the Invasion roster, so go and check them out if you enjoyed this, though they've got a more purely Carcass-based sound. Myst is a treat, though, and if it hasn't gone a reissue it is a prime candidate.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]