Brooklyn’s Miséricorde is insane! Not in the serial killer way, though their six-song EP, Self Deprivation, is unhinged by way of its execution. The fusing of punk’s heavier offshoots with the surprisingly agreeable black metal is nothing new, though is often cool, and this triad has a helluva concoction.
Do you like Converge? Yeah, me too, they’re badass. What about the one-hit wonders of black metal, Weakling? Sick, right? What if the song structure of the former was perfectly blended with the tone and bitterness of the latter? That’s some cool-sounding jams, huh? Miséricorde’s generous six songs are rife with that and more. Dashes of mid-career Darkthrone, a classic of the black metal meets punk subgenre, and the earlier Amenra Masses find shades throughout.
“I really wanted to combine the sound of a band like Converge with the sound of black metal,” bassist/vocalist Mike Gardell said of their sound. “I find the two styles complement each other in this rhythmic and harmonic complexity.”
The dissonance of When Forever Comes Crashing pairs with the bloodlust of Dead as Dreams in a novel approach, a mixture that works far better than even on paper (of note, both LPs were released within a year of each other). Miséricorde outfits the spastic and feral stylings of late 90s mathcore with the uninviting chill of West Coast black metal. Each of the six tracks, including the Lynch-tinged intro, evokes a mood that is, at once, cultivated and wild.
“I think black metal is at its most interesting when it experiments. It’s the main reason why I have this band rooted in that kind of dissonant black metal,” Gardell continued. “That sound pairs extremely nicely with the chaotic hardcore of bands like Converge and it can lead us to experiment with even more sounds and genres in our future compositions.”
Metalcore structure, in all its animalism, is greeted with untamed guitar tones passed down from the third wave, creating an unlikely interplay of kindred genres working in unbridled harmony. That is the base strength of Self Deprivation, how the songwriting understands how best to utilize that interplay, and what overlaps work best. To that end, the EP plays with rare assurance for an inaugural release, while offering overwhelming promise for what Miséricorde will conjure next.
