A.L.N has until now built a fascinating tool-set of sounds with his Blackened Doom Drone project Mizmor. Albums like Cairn and Yodh stand out as unique for their ability to mix genres that one could think should be at odds with each other. Furious Black Metal with anguished shrieks, Doom Metal riffs that equally evoke beauty and gloom and Drone that reflects moments of abject horror—these two albums succeed on many levels. But the key point that makes Mizmor a reckoning force is the heavily emotional content of the lived experience of coming to terms with the loss of faith and subsequent upturning of one’s whole world. A.L.N has been a master of making the negative space in Mizmor‘s Drone influence bleed with emotion and making songs like the 18 minute colossus “Cairn to God” feel like half its length. Understandably, when you put so much of yourself and your pain into your work, it is bound to tear at you in the long run. Thus A.L.N decided to challenge himself by making a shorter album that serves less as a concept album and that is more honest, not obsessing over details as much. This being somewhat of a departure from his previous way of working, did he succeed?
The answer will depend on what parts of Mizmor that previously drew you in. To my ears, the Black Metal influence is what takes the lead in Prosaic, taking up much of the focus where Doom used to lead. I say this not because the Doom sections of the songs are gone (there is plenty of slow to go around), but because the emotionally heavy and indulgent themes of the previous albums feel gone and replaced with the frankly, less impactful “Slice of Life” of anxious emotions, as A.L.N puts it. This leads to songs like the opener “Only an Expanse” feeling like it has no real anchor, only using Doom to break up the monotony of the melodramatic Black Metal that on previous albums did not bother me. Songs “No Place to Arrive” and “Acceptance” tries to strike a middle ground between what came before and the more urgent character of Prosaic‘s Black Metal, but find themselves outmatched by previous work Mizmor has put out. To me, Prosaic is the unfortunate middle step between a slew of great albums and the path to expanding the project’s range. It is an album that keeps me zoning out and unable to remember what just passed, just as the cover art depicts a cloudy, uneventful and forgettable day—ultimately one of this reviewer’s most disappointing experiences in music this year.
