It's like standing in the middle of a fog-enshrouded bog and listening to a dinosaur drowning slowly in a pool of quicksand. It writhes and wails, gnashing its teeth and sending inhuman moans throughout the quagmire. The sound is muddy and unclear, percussive and distorted and utterly inhuman. Tempo varies - sometimes the monster struggles more than others. But the soundtrack to the creature's demise remains the same, and by the time its head sinks beneath the surface of the swamp, the listener isn't quite sure whether to mourn the beast or revel in its demise.

This is what listening to the latest Blut Aus Nord album is like.

The sixth release by France's Blut Aus Nord consists of one song, "Mort," broken up into eight unnamed tracks. It is a meandering mess of dark electronics, ambient soundscapes, and some of the rawest black metal I have ever heard. In all seriousness, most of the time there is nothing more audible than a solid wall of discordant electric guitars and seemingly random percussion. I didn't even notice that there were any vocals until the third or fourth time I listened to the album (with the exception of rather obvious pitch-shifted vocals at the end of track 7). "Mort" is tense, aggressive, confused, sludgy, brutal and sonically obscene, all at the same time.

It makes for an interesting album, to say the least. I know that Blut Aus Nord have been around for thirteen years or so, and have released several albums. This is my first direct exposure to the band and their cacophony, so for all I know Blut Aus Nord have always sounded like a whale being tortured. But I was somewhat unprepared for audio chaos at this level. I still have to fight the notion that this is a completely random, arbitrarily played black metal album. There is certainly some structure beneath the surface, but like the bones of drowned dinosaurs, they are all but invisible when observed from above.

The roots of black metal lie in the creation of music intended to alienate people. And let it be said that this is one of the most alienating albums I have ever come across. About the only 'music' I have heard that exceeds "Mort" in terms of difficulty is the electronic armageddon of Merzbow and other noise bands. After a while, "Mort" stops being an ensemble extreme metal band, and melds into some sort of congealed sonic paste. I've almost never heard anything quite like it.

I am going to go out on a limb and claim that "Mort" isn't a bad album. I find it more than adequate for background extreme metal, and even under close observation, Blut Aus Nord manage to attract and hypnotize the listener sufficiently. It undoubtedly takes great skill to craft an album that is so chaotic, and yet nonetheless thought out (and presumably reproducible in similar form in a live setting). And I haven't the slightest idea how a person can even get sounds like these out of guitars or other instruments.

I'd imagine the audience for a sonic apocalypse such as "Mort" would be small. There are some passing similarities to Emperor and (metal) Ulver, but mostly Blut Aus Nord sound like Blut Aus Nord. For those of you who like your black metal thick, dirty, muddy and excruciatingly difficult to listen to... well, you probably already know who Blut Aus Nord are, and maybe even already own "Mort." But anyone who is seeking a pleasant slab of aural torture should be sure to track down their latest Candlelight Records release. It's like watching a train wreck (and listening to it too), but to paraphrase the cliché, you might be surprised how captivating "Mort" actually is.