For the French Mhönos, the eternal dilemma that haunts those who have to express an opinion on music that is decidedly out of the box, that is to understand if it is true brilliance or a jumble of sounds put together without any apparent logic. In my opinion, any form of musical experimentation must also be kept within a framework in which the listener can perceive some kind of design that allows him to assimilate works, otherwise, at great risk of being considered an exhibition of noise as an end in itself. LXXXVII oscillates dangerously on this boundary and I imagine that its placement, on one side or the other, depends not only on the predisposition of the different subjects to similar listening but, even, on the specific mood of the same person in the moment in which the sound of Mhönos comes without any mercy. Trying to be aseptic and objective, I believe that this is a work of considerable thickness, because here the evil ceases to be something that accompanies us in a subliminal way to propose itself in an almost solid state, through a form of black metal distorted by a ritual approach that brings everything on an ambient drone plane, with the addition of very malevolent vocals to complete the picture. Mhönos offer a work that seriously risks to end up as a coaster if purchased in CD format by someone who is not clear what are the purposes of these mysterious transalpine “brothers”; vice versa, if you have a minimum of masochistic familiarity with certain sounds, it is difficult to remain indifferent to this exhibition of poisonous and obscure musical madness. For a little more than forty minutes all the pain and the evil that we shake from our shoulders, considering it only the result of ancestral fears, is evoked by Mhönos to show us with its sinister load of inevitable death and decay: all without making too much noise, but entrusting it to minimal sounds and vocal artifices that from unpleasant gradually become insinuating until they can no longer be driven from memory.
LXXXVII must surely be listened to, even if at your own risk.

2018 – Zanjeer Zani Productions