Morrigan: Diananns Whisper

The final album of German Black Metal act, Morrigan, appeared - after a lengthy delay - in 2013 via Undercover Records on both CD and vinyl: Diananns [sic] Whisper.  A romantic, mystical painting adorns the cover but the Gothic album title feels amateur in its superimposition.  The package is low-fi, kind of what you would expect from the underground anyway.  Moving on to the music...  The aggression is often left aside here in favour of a moody outing, more melodic in many ways, although very much rough around the edges.  This is in no way a polished piece of work, perhaps deliberately so.  The opening six minute composition, 'Shadowwanderer', is melancholic and slow, setting the tone for much of what's to come.  Clearer vocals are clumsy in sound, though suiting the desperate nature of the song itself.  Edging closer to a Black Metal rasp, the band veer into 'Bloodwidow', complete with not-quite-trademark backing vocals reminiscent of some of Quorthon's work of course.  A pleasing heavy vibe accompanies this track.

'Warbitch' (they do like their bitches...) picks up the pace to midway for a heavy metal/traditional Black Metal aura, raw instrumentation throughout, along with a distorted solo to boot.  The nicely titled 'Thy Nasty Reaper' follows this with a much thrashier mood, a bit of early Emperor going on to catch you off guard before the album slips sneakily into '13 Steps at Dawn', a ballad in essence that will make you weep at the pains of existence.  This is of course not the entire track, as it quickly becomes heavier with a Black Metal rasp once again, albeit maintaining its established core melody.  'The Gallic War' is more of the Morrigan same in terms of a bit epic with the choral underlayer going on.  'Maze of the Graves' is faster again, just as gears switch down for the best track of the album, 'The Singing Hangman', atmospheric and full of doom.  The frantic, schizophrenic title track and 'Dustdevils' close the album.

At fifty-five minutes I would say the album is too long, particularly as it doesn't really cover any new ground for the band (other than a higher volume of clean vocal implementation).  Whilst I do love some of Morrigan's material, they explored every ounce of the breadth of obvious limited possibilities across their seven album career.  They achieved some great results, maybe repeating too few themes too often.  Bathory were ever present as an influential spirit, and at least the German band appeared to wear this influence proudly.  It was a shame that they never reached the heights of the brilliant Headcult again.  Diananns Whisper itself was not quite the last we would hear of Morrigan, however.  They appeared in 2014 for a limited edition split vinyl with Blizzard, a German thrash band who are possibly more active than their colleagues.  Morrigan themselves have been seen in a live capacity as recently as 2017 to my knowledge, so there may be more to come from this slightly mysterious and dark two-man act after all.