Band: : Codex Mortis
Album: Tales of Woe
Genre: Black Metal
Country: The Netherlands
Label: Black Lion Records
Released: June 21ste, 2024
Introduction
The Dutch blokes from Codex Mortis are back with their second full album. These guys earned their stripes within various Dutch black metal and death metal bands. I listened to their first album What Befalls of Tained Souls pretty often, and it is quite the banger, so it’s time to dive into the new album Tales of Woe.
Tales of Woe
Tracklist:
- Forsaken
- Capricious Disembodied Villain
- Chosen
- Trenched in Blood
- Fire, Screams and Death
- It Dies with Me
So you bought the album (let’s be old-fashioned and just ignore the idea of streaming platforms), you return home, and you pop this into your stereo set, what can you expect?
Not a moment of rest, that’s for sure. From the instant this album starts to play, it’s full speed ahead. The first track of the album Forsaken doesn’t allow you time to catch a breath, it goes hard from the first second, and it just keeps on pummeling your ear drums. The riffs are great on that track and the vocals are harsh, there are some DM vocals in the mix, which I don’t care for, but that’s just my personal taste, others probably won’t mind them at all. But for a first song on an album, it’s a great one, it grabs your soul and never lets’ go.
And that pace goes throughout the entire album, the album has 8 tracks, but the runtime is only 27 minutes. Is that short runtime a bad thing? In my book it ain’t, I like fast-paced albums that don’t throw in nonsense and fillers on an album to stretch it’s time. You try to tell something through your music (at least that’s the idea behind music for me) and if that story takes you 27 minutes to tell, that’s fine with me.
The first song where the tempo quiets down is the third track of the album Chosen. This track starts with a nice melodic piece, but after that is over it goes full force again. This song has some very pleasant riffs in it and the tune in some places is pretty catchy, with a pleasant flow throughout.
And that flow I was talking about continues through the last songs as well. With Fire Screams and Death being one of my favourite songs of this album. That song just goes, and as said above, I don’t like the Death metal style vocals, but for this song it fits this perfectly. The outro of the has a great riff and a more classic rock vibe to it.
After those 27 minutes, this album is done with your soul, and it cleansed it pretty well or totally crushed it, depends on your take on the proceedings, I guess.
Conclusion
One thing is apparent with this release, they are all great musicians, you can hear that they know what they are doing. Since my taste is black metal and not death metal, I would like them to see go more that style and lose this kind of vocals, but that’s the only “complaint” I have. The production of the album is excellent, so no faults there.
If you are into fast-paced black metal with a hint of Death metal mixed through it, you should give this a shot, I’m sure you’ll like it.
BMZ Rating: 7,5 out of 10
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