Morag Tong – Grieve

 

 

Morag Tong – Grieve
Majestic Mountain Records – 2023
Doom, Sludge, Prog
Rated: ****

I played the very first Elder Scrolls computer game, called Arena. Which was amazing and a leap forward when it came to RPG games back then. I had a few moments with the follow-up Daggerfall. I know I have Skyrim somewhere, but never got around to spending time with it. This is me leading up to stating that I should be forgiven for not knowing the Morag Tong name before starting a run through of their new Grieve album out on Majestic Mountain Records. It also leading up to me kneeling to beg some more because this is their third release and we should have googled their name before. Cause we did spend some time with Through Clouded Time from 2016 and even more with Last Knell of Om from 2018. But we never knew Morag Tong was taken from the Elder Scrolls lore and more specifically the Morrowind game. And on some levels, that doesn’t matter one bit. Especially when you get swooped away by the emotive doom and atmospheric sludge that is Grieve. Progressive and psychedelic touches, three tracks that last almost as long as that final fourth track, totaling almost forty-two minutes. It’s heavy, cumbersome and large but at the same time moving towards meditative and pensive. The washing tide of sounds that starts off that final track No Sun, No Moon perhaps the penultimate example of this meditative side of them. For what better location might there be than seaside, shoreside, and waves slowly rolling in. The steady building of sound, tension and intensity. Guided by a gentle wailing guitar, before the guttural lamentation joins in that brings on a vocal dirge before switching to a calm, attractive and melodic section. Progressive, subtle and spacious, but you know that segment will of course move into a heavier, explosive in slow motion, fragment that reintroduces the howling and agonizing vocals. And then letting it all dissolve into silence, the nothingness we all Grieve about. It’s impressive, the amount of expansiveness, variety and creative energy displayed in that one twenty-minute-long final song. But you already went through those three earlier tracks, so it’s been a wonderful journey, we had a good run, no, amazing run and knowing that means you don’t have to Grieve for too long…

(Written by JK)

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