Year: 2023
Label: self-released

I suppose you could say US act Maligna Cerebra play with an open hand. The project’s name translates to “malignant brain”, the name of this EP length release to “deathly pallor.” These, and the cover image of a post-mortem photograph of a child all speak clearly of a powerful negativity, which the artist does not seek to conceal or mitigate.

Perusing the back catalogue of this prolific artist only strengthens this impression. You can’t very well mistake names such as Bloodletting Rituals, Putrefaction Premonition or Sickness & Syndrome for anything but complete, even sadistic negativity.

Based on the names alone, however, you could mistake Maligna Cerebra for a death metal band. That’s not the case: Pallor Mortis offers 26 minutes of haunting, industrial dark ambience. Essentially, the tracks on the EP are variations of a pretty simple, tried-and-true style based on slow, long, ebbing and flowing waves of sound. Most tracks play with the contrast of a louder layer of high, shrill sounds complemented with a lower, murkier, bass-y layer of sound, which both emerge slowly, reach their apex and wash out without much modulation or development. A lot of the time, Pallor Mortis is very understated if not necessarily minimalist.

This is a very classic style of eerie electronics, which doesn’t really land purely in any of the niché genres. The topmost reference is dark ambient, but one should certainly throw in death industrial and even power electronics. There’s a strong element of industrial noise in these compositions, though Pallor Mortis never becomes cacophonous or abrasive. Instead, there is the pre-meditated and reined-in hostility of classic negative electronics.

Pallor Mortis comes across as a particularly negative variation of a ghost story. The long, slow layers of piercing sound and the unsettling, droning lower frequencies speak of devouring spirits hostile to corporeal existence and of the inevitability of death. The EP could be the soundtrack to a session of Victorian spiritualism parting the veil to reveal an eerie post-mortem world antagonistic towards human life.

As mentioned above, Pallor Mortis is built from rather conventional building blocks. It’s not a particularly original or innovative release. But, on the other and far more significant hand, it’s deadly effective. The atmospheres are stark and vivid, and in the right mindset, listening to Pallor Mortis is a haunting experience.

Visit Maligna Cerebra on Bandcamp