Anxiety Never Descending is the debut album from this Polish group, and the band does a good job of establishing their sound with its six tracks. Aiming for something more than wall-to-wall blast-beats, Kult Mogil set up chilly atmospheres of dissonant feedback and buzzing bass for an aggressive fusion of black metal’s spirit and focus of purpose with death-grounded riffs and chords. Serving as another bridging point is the work of the drummer, who combines the two styles in a way that rarely settles fully into either, without compromising any of the vitality.
Reaching for bands to serve as comparison to Kult Mogil‘s work here is difficult, personally speaking. There’s something to it like Mörk Gryning with the symphonic elements ground away, Birkenau with less ethereality and the NS elements stripped out, or Toxic Holocaust on a dirtier and heavier bender. Hell, as long as I’m just throwing stuff out there, think of it as a smashing together of Pig Destroyer and GG Allin, or Agalloch in a blender with Slaughter and Sarcofago. To be honest, though, there’s so much tearing down of their musical form every time they start to settle in, trying to point to who they sound like is much less useful than just urging you to check KM out and judge them on their own merits.
Whichever lineage of influence you might hear when listening to AND, there’s good effort and crafting shaping the furious din they hammer out. The instrumental sections, which often give way to a harsh and disintegrating keening, show an experimental side which should help keep the band from growing bored and happy to recycle on future albums, along with providing an extra belt of sonic nihilism to the acerbic atmosphere of this LP.
Listeners with a broader knowledge of death metal bands than mine will probably be able to pick out sections here and there which seem like homage/legacy stemming from specific groups, but AND does a very solid job of doing what it needs to as a debut. The band sets down a sense of their attitude and style, there’s hooks to pull people back after the first play, and they seem genuinely angry, always refreshing with modern metal being such a commercialized commodity. If grinding, pounding, and screams of rage are what get you through the day, check ’em out.
