Hammemit - The Ghastliere Morrowe (Cassette)

Hammemit - The Ghastliere Morrowe (Cassette)

Tax included.
Currently unavailable
Special offer
Choose a Free Gift with any order over £5

Includes fold-out insert and unique code for digital download

Michael Morthwork is responsible for English black metal / noise project EMIT. The evolution of a more ambient sound necessitated the establishment of a new identity: HAMMEMIT.

The self-description "modern music for medieval sensibilities" (and vice versa) turns out to be evocative, with reverbed guitars enveloping the listener in a murk of olde religion and hermetic ritual from occult corners of a distant dark age.

The two tracks on side one of this cassette originally appeared last year as an 8" acetate on the PseudoArcana label. On this expanded reissue, the stylistic scope is broadened by the addition of a further four-song suite, taking in pastoral flute, harrowing chanting, and Hainoesque guitar drone.

Musick recordynges tooke playse inne the twelthe ande seventhe yeres of thys centurie.
Michael Morthwork play'd gytarre ande Bruder Unknowne H play'd of percussionne.
Side 1: Musick fyrst to be fownde on asetayte vynell, publysh'd of PseudoArcana.

Details

Track listing

  1. The Ghastliere Morrowe
  2. Forlorne inne Sighte of the Lorde
  3. Sacred Hidden Spring
  4. A Rusted Key to Hilldeeps
  5. In This Gracious Mystery
  6. Sertayn Owld Rowdes...

Review

Last week I was talking to a friend about Hammemit when I described them as 'medieval dark ambient' for lack of a better term, but it really doesn't capture what Hammemit is all about. There's no part of their discography, including The Ghastliere Morrowe, that feels exclusively "medieval", "dark", or "ambient". It's often severely dissonant and alienating, but even when the unearthly screams lay their dreadful pallor over the cacophony there is never a sense of posturing "evil". Instead, they seem to tap into something far deeper, where the normal human (or is it modern?) perception of the world is rendered irrelevant. If you search below the grime and filth of The Ghastliere Morrowe, you may find what I did: a meditative realization of awe and wonder interweaved into the veins of this oft appalling music; "Nature's Beautiful Ugliness", indeed. For myself, it is this feeling that defines all of the psealms of Hammemit and marks them as such a unique and special band, and it's not something that can be put into words. It needs to be experienced for itself. The idiosyncratic wanderings of Hammemit on The Ghastliere Morrowe are once again as idyllic as they are utterly foreign; each song opening a window into half remembered dreamscapes where the borders of memory, impression, and dream have deliquesced into a nebulous recollection of some distant, senseless bliss. - 5/5