Mystifier - Protogoni Mauro Magoko Dynasteia

Mystifier are a Brazilian power trio with the three members’ instrumental roles parallel to those of Rush. Mystifier, however, as is made apparent by the album cover, play a harsher, cosmic form of death metal rather than the progressive rock of Alex, Neil, and Geddy. Rush has nothing to do with this album other than the fact that they’re a trio too and that I was just binging a few of my favorite albums of theirs a few days ago (A Farewell to Kings, Permanent Waves, 2112, and Hemispheres, if you must know).
So enough about my favorite Rush albums and on to this album. Some more context about it, Mystifier is no rookie band; despite their name being so new to so many they were actually active during death metal’s formative years, beginning in ‘89, and grinding through their local Salvadoran underground scene. The band put out four albums and an EP between 1992 and 2001, but had been silent on the frontier of new material for longer than they had even been putting out albums until being picked up by the ever-excellent Season of Mist to finally release their fifth album this year.
With such a long time between albums, the question, inevitably, is whether the band could get their engines going again enough to adjust to and keep up with the modern era of death metal at it’s most saturated and at the biggest stage for them yet.
Well, Protogoni Mauro Magoko Dynasteia is certainly not an album on which the band rely on any old-school roots to carry them on a nostalgic air baloon over the rough landscapes of modern death metal. Rather, Mystifier sound right at home with much of the Behemoth-inspired and especially the Rotting Christ-inspired blackened death metal of the past few years. Echo-y and Satanically sinister, the band only provide brief twinges of death metal’s older styles like on the slower, simpler opening riff of “Soultrap Sorcery of Vengeance” and even the slow string-bending riffing of death/doom trudge of “(Introcucione D'la Melodia Mortuoria) Thanatopraxy”, which probably shows the band’s versatility the best as it weaves between slower, doomier parts and thicker, faster death metal assault. But for the rest of the former song, and most of the album, the band incorporate snarling black metal vocals with brooding choral vocals and layered clean chanting vocals to produce the liturgical sound that Batushka showed to be so potent within the genre, that has empowered more artists in the field to work it into their arsenal. And Mystifier indeed show that they’ve been keeping their eyes on death metal’s movements over the years and working on making their sound more vibrant and varied through the genre’s more recent progressions. The songs “Weighing Heart Ceremony” and especially “Witching Lycanthropic Moon” work in these angelic/demonic vocal amalgamations that really bring an extra level of immersion into the ritual the band is conducting. But the band are not at all times tracing the steps of death metal’s newer, more vocally melodic icons; they do indeed limit their use of such newer tactics to keep the album from being overly sweetened by it (not that I think choirs or clean singing makes death metal less powerful, I’m just likening overuse of it to dumping too much sugar into a baking recipe).
One standout cut not basing its approach on choirs or vocal melodies is the cavernously thrashy and war-themed “Al Nakba (666 Days of War)”, whose on-off double-bass synchrony with the guitars is just delicious, and it shows that Mystifier is not dependent on studio tricks or trying to ape the trends of younger bands. They have clearly kept up with the genre they love so much and built this album out of the years of inspiration they saw as the genre grew and progressed while they waited in silence to make their contribution.
Indeed, this album may come off as trying to copy the new guard a bit in its first few tracks, but by the time it’s finished it shows itself to be a much more temporally comprehensive set of songs, spanning the genre’s origins to its recent endeavors. This is certainly one of the best ways a band like this can come back after so long with new material: tastefully updating their sound, but not transparently bandwagoning onto trends, and retaining their original appeal. And this was a longer wait than the new Tool album has been so far, so there’s still hope for that. Anyway, Mystifier, Protogoni Mauro Magoko Dynasteia, an emphatic comeback.
Derek Zoolander Calender/10

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