As nameless dead husks are dragged out of purgatorial respite and grated along sulfur paved roads ’til shaken loose of all remaining lifesblood their detrital pseudo-ichor serves to cultivate the soil below, a ritual of awakening for the anonymous and impossible to locate ego-void channeler(s) behind caustic black/death metal quartet MYLINGAR. In the course of reconnecting with their own brand of chaotic nihil all auld damage surfaces through leathered skin as ‘Út‘ pierces outward and into freshly intoxicating surrealism. Unbowed in their sensorial assault but opened wide to a new thread we find their work here less strictly vacuumed from the void and now more broadly dynamic in tempo and expression within the confines of their cruel signature barrage.

Purported to be partially Swedish per their album titles and active since at least 2016 you will know Mylingar by their guitar tone rather than their face(s), a hollow and ear-scathingly percussive rhythmic handle which acts as their core identifying factor beyond visual design. They’ve purposed their work with creating supremely affecting dread and part of achieving that goal of angst includes voiding it of human identity, a great unknown source of darkness intent on “ego destruction”. Their work exists with extreme focus for corrosive, sometimes motorik black/death metal which carries a grinding bestial (but not sloppy) curve prone to dissonant and stream-of-consciousness tied arc. It’d be fair to look to the generation inspired by Portal in the 2010’s (re: earlier Abyssal) as well as more dizzying stuff like Hissing for general reference.

Rather than re-examine their entire discography here I’d suggest Mylingar‘s debut LP (‘Döda Själar‘, 2019) remains substantive enough to meet whatever hype you’ll experience in pursuit. In review of the album at the time I’d recommended it as a less restricted work compared to their past EPs re: “Trading in the muscular collapse of [‘Döda Drömmar‘] for an ever-expanding pool of bone melting sourness ‘Döda Själar’ presents itself as a fall from a high place into disarray, a truly painful and challenging descent that is ever without an endpoint in sight.” wherein the woeful senses-annihilating accost of their work had achieved its desired level of violation. To be fair after several years of inactivity I’d figured they were simply done with their experiment and that’d have been find as the band’s debut managed to uphold the promised style of their EP releases while extending its reach into bizarre experimental headspace, a real high point to step out on.

Seven years later Mylingar haven’t drastically changed, though ‘Út’ seems to feature Icelandic (?) titling rather than Swedish. Their signature rhythm guitar tone has long none of its clangor and in fact the loudness of it (via opener “Megi” esp.) recalls the rawed-out loudness of their first EP (‘Döda vägar‘, 2016) to some mild degree. Sound design is fully claustrophobia-inducing accost and their mutant roar still leads atop largely artificial sounding drumming once more. All signs initially point to a record which takes fewer bloodier swipes out of line than ‘Döda Själar‘ had some years ago ’til we begin to note their wall of noise begin to crumble away in the first few songs, hitting slower-paced obstructions, stamping beats and dissonant reeling movements (see: “Blóð”).

“Rækta” is probably the most notable example of what is both classically Mylingar by nature on this album alongside where they’ve taken flight away from the dirging disso-black/death mass found on earlier releases. When I look to one of the better releases along these lines in recent memory, such as Délirant‘s ‘Thoughteater‘ or Altarage‘s eclectic ‘Worst Case Scenario‘, obviously this sound and the mechanical volatility of their stands out in lending ‘Út’ its own sensorially offensive character. This is exacerbated by the harsh noise whorl that is “Jarðveginn” right after, an escalation away from the tempered grooves which pock most of the songs prior and a set-up for the animalistic freakout (see: “Af”) which occurs on each step toward the finale.

I could go on walking you along the stairwell of the mind’s abysm with appropriately vague descriptions of the shapes ahead of this dimly lit yet howling-mad tunnel but the real question you should pose when walking away from ‘Út’ is whether or not it’d achieved the intended goal of inspiring visceral dread within your mind. In my case it’d largely been a headache beyond choice riffs and the brilliant incidental clangor achieved between the chosen guitar tones and their abstracted yield. That is to suggest that I must be numbed by years of ascendant dissonant black and death metal selections over the last ~decade to be moved by anything, well, inspired to respond with more than a slight nudge of the volume knob. If you wander here into Mylingar‘s revived realm expect it to be painful, nerve-wracking in any case, but also lightly modified by the passage of time to the point that it may not be as disruptive to your current state of MK Ultra-level desensitization as expected. A moderately high recommendation.

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